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ONTRIBUTIONS  TO 


GEOGRAPHY  OF  MICHIGAN 


MATERIAL   FOR 
GEOGRAPHY  OF  MICHIGAN 


MARK  S.  W.  JEFFERSON 
Michigan  State  Norvial  College 


OFTHf 

UIS//VER! 


YPSILANTI,      1906 

PRKSS   OF  THK   SCHARF  TAG,    LABEI,   &    BOX   CO, 


WMIiuM,  1906,-3Iai i  O.  W.  Jcffomon 


(f  Ot- 


MATERIAL  FOR  GEOGRAPHY  OF  MICHIGAN 


MARK  S.  W.  JEFFERSON 
Professor  of  Geography,  Michigan  State  Normal  College 


The  chief  material  offered  is  the  series  of  diagrams,  to  which  much  atten- 
tion may  be  given.  The  text  serves  mainly  to  interpret  them  and  aids  to 
picture  conditions  prevailing  over  wide  areas.  Any  teacher  should  go  to  the 
diagrams  for  the  facts  of  the  home  locality  in  which  she  teaches ;  to  the  relief 
map  for  her  height  above  sea  level  and  the  character  of  the  surface  of  her 
neighborhood;  to  the  map  of  extent  of  Michigan  for  other  illustrative  exer- 
cises of  the  same  sort  in  other  directions.  The  diagrams  are  capable  of  being 
read  for  any  locality  in  the  region  or  for  all  localities;  how  high,  how  smooth 
or  rough  they  are,  what  sort  of  rocks  or  soils  are  probably  prevalent  there, 
how  cold  it  is  there  in  winter  and  how  hot  in  summer,  what  grows  there,  how 
thickly  settled,  when  settled.  Whatever  things  can  be  shown  in  their  rela- 
tion to  the  environment  gain  an  importance  for  geographic  study  that  may 
not  be  intrinsically  theirs.  Very  important  characters  of  Michigan  that  can- 
not be  shown  to  be  related  to  configuration,  soil  or  climate  have  no  present 
value  from  a  geographic  point  of  view.  Michigan  is  truly  a  group  of  people 
and  not  a  portion  of  North  America,  yet  such  is  not  a  geographic  point  of 
view.  This  must  concern  itself  with  the  part  of  the  earth  that  Michigan 
occupies  and  in  how  far  its  life  is  affected  by  its  home.  If  this  is  borne  in 
mind,  it  will  perhaps  explain  the  lack  of  some  things  about  the  state  that 
might  be  told  here. 

In  connection  with  the  paragraphs  on  Physiography,  students  are  referred 
to  the  admirable  report  of  the  state  geologist  for  1904,  just  issued,  and  to 
Taylor's  Short  History  of  the  Great  Lakes,  in  "Studies  in  Indiana  Geog- 
raphy," Inland  Publishing  Co.,  Terre  Haute,  Ind. 

Authorities  for  the  relief  map  are:  F'rank  Leverett  for  the  lower  penin- 
sula and  the  country  to  the  southeast;  U.  S.  relief  map  and  Gannett  diction- 
ary of  altitudes  for  Minnesota,  Wisconsin  and  upper  peninsula ;  and  the 
Canadian  dictionary  of  altitudes  for  Canada. 

Michigan  is  a  large  state  with  great  natural  resources, 
likely  in  the  future  to  support  a  population  little  inferior  to 
the  .greatest  of  the  United  States.  Massachusetts  has  today 
a  population  of  nearly  three  millions ;  Michigan  with  seven 
times  as  much  territory,  and  richer  territory,  should  some  day 
have  twenty  millions  within  her  boundaries.  In  a  new  coun- 
try like  ours  the  near  places  are  first  occupied,  the  easy  things 
first  done.  It  is  for  this  reason  and  the  great  importance  that 
contact  with  Europe  has  had  for  us  in  the  past  that  the  states 
of  the  Atlantic  seaboard  have   proceeded    so  much  further  in 


1G2919 


developing  their  resources  than  the  newer  communities  of  the 
west.  There  are  today  18  states  larger  than  Michigan,  but 
most  of  these  are  west  of  the  100th  meridian  and  many  of 
them  limited  for  human  occupancy  by  insufficient  rainfall. 
In  parts  of  our  state  the  rainfall  is  light,  but  everywhere 
sufficient  for  agriculture.     If  a  circle  be  drawn  with  its  center 

at  the  southeastern  corner  of  Mich- 
igan large  enough  to  extend  across 
Isle  Roy  ale,    it    will    also  include 
New     York,     Washington,    Rich- 
mond,   Va.,    and    Raleigh,    N.  C. 
The  radius  of  the  circle   would  be 
five  hundred  miles.     No  state  has 
so  long  a  coast  line.     None  has  a 
greater    variety     of     valuable     re- 
sources.      Lying  far  to  the  north 
the  lakes  save  it  from  the  rigor  of 
Fig  1.  Extent  of  Michigan         an  interior    climate,    yet      is  it  in 
that   invigorating  zone  of  the   spells    of    weather,  now  warm, 
now   cold,  now   wet,  now    dry,   in  which  are    found  the  most 
prosperous  and  progressive  peoples,  the  world  over. 

Our  state  is  a  part  of  the  physical  region  of  the  great 
lakes.  All  parts  of  this  area  drain  to  the  St.  Lawrence  river; 
all  parts  enjoy  the  milder  climate  that  comes  from  the  pres- 
ence of  these  great  bodies  of  water,  loth  to  heat  up  under  the 
sun  of  summer  and  equally  slow  in  winter  to  yield  up  what 
warmth  they  have.  The  great  economic  distinction  of  the 
region  lies  in  the  enormous  transportation  possibilities  of  broad 
and  deep  water  ways  between  the  pass  over  the  almost  imper- 
ceptible divide  at  Chicago  leading  to  the  Mississippi  basin 
and  the  prairie  states  and  that  in  the  Mohawk  valley  leading 
to  the  Atlantic  seaboard  and  to  Europe.  It  is  no  coincidence 
that  the  growth  of  the  Northwest  territory  has  been  parallelled 
by  the  expansion  of  New  York,  the  only  Atlantic  port  con- 
nected by  an  easy  pass  with  the  interior  of  the  continent.  We 
observe  at  once  that  to  study  the  physical  aspects  of  the  state 
we  must  consider  a  wider  area  than  state  or  country.     The 


political  boundaries  by  no  means  coincide  with  the  natural 
ones.  This  is  true  from  every  point  of  view  from  which  we 
consider  the  state.  We  can  never  let  ourselves  be  stopped  by 
the  state  or  national  boundaries. 

There  are,  however,  striking  contrasts  between  the  north- 
ern and  southern  parts  of  the  region,  and  Michigan,  like  Wis- 
consin and  Ontario,  lies  in  both  northern  and  southern  zones. 
The  northern  zone  is  a  region  of  forests  in  which  wild  animals 
still  abound,  of  thin  human  population,  of  scattered  pockets 
of  thin  soil  among  frequent  rocky  knobs,  a  region  where  rocks 
are  everywhere  in  evidence,  hard  and  complicated  in  structure, 
and  abounding  in  iron  and  copper.     This  zone  is  well  shown 


Fig.  2.       Old  hard  rocks  in  the  north 


on  diagram  2  of  "Old  hard  Rocks."  It  includes  northern 
Ontario,  northern  Wisconsin,  northern  Minnesota  and  the 
western  part  of  the  upper  peninsula  of  Michigan.  Of  this 
territory  Michigan  has  about  7,000  square  miles,  with  150,000 
inhabitants. 

South  of  this  is  a  region  of  deep  soils,  of  agriculture  and 
of  denser  population.  It  stretches  across  peninsular  Ontario, 
southern  Michigan  and  Wisconsin  and  the  northern  parts  of 
Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Illinois.  This  zone  is  well  shown  on  the 
diagrams  of  population  and  all  those  representing  farm  ani- 
mals and  farm  products. 

The  earth  is  a  great  ball  of  rock.  When  no  rock  appears 
at  the  surface  a  moderate  boring  always  reaches  it  beneath  and 
in  some  countries,  like  our  northern  zone  and  Norway,  it 
forms  the  greater  part  of  the  visible  surface.  Along  the  north 
shore  of  Georgian  Bay  the  trees  in  summer  are  unable  to 
mask  with  their  green  leaves  the  brown  of  the  ledges  between. 
Soils  begin  with  the  decay  of  the  rock  under  the  action 
of  the  weather.  In  the  mountains  this  decayed  rock  may  be 
washed  down  the  slopes  by  the  rains  as  fast  as  it  forms  and 
the  rocks  remain  bare,  but  in  most  places  the  rocky  core  of 
the  earth  soon  becomes  buried  beneath  this  coating  of  decayed 
rock.  If  you  take  up  a  handful  of  dirt  you  find  bits  of  the 
rock  in  it,  but  in  the  southern  lake  zone  the  bits  of  rock  found 
in  the  soil  are  often  quite  unlike  the  ledges  buried  beneath. 
Many  of  them  are  plainly  bits  broken  from  the  hard  rock 
ledges  of  the  northern  zone.  So  are  the  common  field  stones 
that  have  afforded  so  much  excellent  building  material  in  the 
southern  zone.  We  learn  from  this  that  the  northern  zone  is 
thin  of  soil  partly  because  much  of  its  rock  waste  has  gone  to 
the  southern  region.  This  was  done  by  the  ancient  glaciers. 
In  the  northern  zone  only  firm  rock  was  left  and  this  often  in 
knobs  and  ridges,  rounded,  smoothed  and  grooved  by  the 
passing  of  the  ice.  One  of  these  knobs  near  Marquette  is 
shown  in  the  picture. 

These  rocks  of  the  upper  lake  country  are  among  the 
oldest  in  the  world.     They  have  existed  much  in  the  present 


Knob  of  Greenstone  Schist  near  Marquette.  Mich. 


condition  since  a  period  when  nothing  lived  upon  the  earth, 
not  even  the  sea  weeds  and  sea  creatures  that  were  the  earliest 
forms  of  life.  The  landscape  must  have  been  barren  and 
brown,  dreary  and  monotonous  in  the  extreme,  everywhere 
naked  rock  and  dirt,  without  any  green  thing  to  rest  the  eye 
or  moving  insect,  bird  or  animal  to  interrupt  the  stillness. 
The  great  beds  of  copper  and  iron  ore  that  are  the  wealth  of 
this  district  today  are  due  to  the  concentrating  action  of  the 
weather  through  the  enormous  length  of  time  that  they  have 
been  exposed  to  the  elements.  /  The  deep  soil  of  the  south 
has  resulted  from  the  addition  to  its  own  rock  waste  of  much 
waste  from  the  north.  Naturally  the  people  of  these  two 
regions  do  different  things  for  a  living  and  probably  they 
always  will.  There  are  great  differences,  too,  in  the  rocks 
that  underlie  the  soils  of  the  two  zones.  When  we  call  the 
northern  rocks  hard  rocks  we  are  using  a  name  that  covers  a 
great  variety  of  kinds.  Hard  they  all  are,  and  very  old,  per- 
haps there  are  no  older  rocks  on  the  earth's  surface;  some  are 
granite  like,  with  large  crystal  grains  of  different  shapes  and 
colors.  These  usually  have  no  layers  in  them.  Others  are 
in  layers  commonly  a  good  deal  bent  and  twisted  and  others 
where  freshly  broken  have  an  appearance  not  unlike  a  broken 


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surface  of  glass  or  pottery.  But  the  best  way  to  get  an  idea 
of  these  rocks  is  to  look  at  them  in  the  field  stones.  In 
northwest  Michigan  they  abound  in  the  ledges  and  in  the  rest 
of  the  state  they  have  been  so  much  used  for  underpinnings 
that  they  are  easy  to  see. 

Such  ridges  are  shown  on  the  relief  map  in  the  Copper 
range,  backbone  of  Keweenaw  peninsula,  the  Mesabi  range 
near  the  48th  parallel  west  of  Lake  Superior,  where  are  the 
greatest  iron_mines  of  thejworld,  the  Porcupine  Mountains  on 
the  south  shore  of  the  same  lake,  just  east  of  the  90th 
meridian  and  the  mountains  on  the  88th  meridian  west  of  Mar- 
quette. In  all  these  hills  and  ridges  of  the  mineral  country 
rock  is  everywhere  in  evidence.  In  the  hills  of  the  southern 
peninsula  rock  can  only  be  reached  by  boring,  and  the  boring 
would  be  deeper  on  the  hills  than  in  the  valleys. 

The  weathering    and    wasting  of  these  ancient    rocks    is 


Fig.  5.       Bock  Falls,  near  Harbor  Beach 


ID 

work  that  was  done  long  before  the  time  of  the  glaciers, 
which  merely  did  the  final  chiselling  and  sandpapering. 

Under  the  deep  soils  of  the  southern  region  are  other 
rocks.  This  picture,  fig.  5,  of  a  creek  falling  into  Lake 
Huron  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  thumb  of  Michigan,  with 
the  waters  tumbling  down  over  the  edges  of  the  rocks  shows 
how  they  lie  in  smooth  flat  layers  like  the  leaves  of  a  book. 
Here  and  there  they  are  a  little  uneven,  their  edges  are  usually 
much  frayed  and  worn,  as  if  the  book  had  been  badly  handled. 
One  of  these  layers — the  hard  Niagara  limestone — forms,  with 
its  slightly  upturned  edge, a  long  line  of  peninsulas  and  islands ; 
between  Erie  and  Ontario,  where  it  gets  its  name  from  the 
famous  cataract  that  tumbles  over  it, — in  the  high  land 
running  across  the  province  of  Ontario  and  ending  to  the 
northwest  in  the  peninsula  between  Lake  Huron  and  Georgian 
Bay,  in  Manitoulin  and  Drummond  Islands,  in  the  eastern 
part  of  the  upper  peninsula  and  the  long  points  that  separate 
Green  Bay  from  Lake  Michigan.  The  great  leaf  whose  edges 
form  this  long  ridge  extends  under  Lakes  Huron  and  Michi- 
gan, passing  under  lower  Michigan  perhaps  a  mile  beneath 
the  surface  of  the  lakes,  in  a  shallow  basin  form,  shallow 
because  it  is  three  hundred  miles  wide  to  one  mile  deep. 
A  bit  of  tin  three  inches  wide  and  bent  down  a  hundredth 
of  an  inch  in  the  middle  would  represent  its  shape  very  well. 

Inside  the  hard  Niagara  ridge  the  Monroe  rocks  came  to 
the  surface  where  are  now  the  basins  of  Lakes  Erie,  Huron 
and  Michigan.  These  lake  basins  are  believed  to  be  due  to 
the  softness  of  these  rocks,  limestones,  themselves  easily  dis- 
solved by  rain  water,  and  containing  layers  of  still  more  sol- 
uble salt  and  gypsum.  Bits  of  these  rocks  occur  still  above 
water,  as  Mackinac  Island  and  the  mainland  of  St.  Ignace 
and  the  shores  and  islands  about  the  western  end  of  Lake 
Erie. 

The  layered  rocks  of  the  southern  zone  were  formed  as 
sands  and  more  or  less  limy  muds  on  the  bottom  of  an  ancient 
sea  which  opened  southward  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  had 
the  hard  rocks  of  the  northern  zone  for   their  northern  shore. 


11 

and  also  for  a  floor  under  them.  The  material  worn  from  the 
hard  rocks  in  their  long  exposure  to  the  elements  was  washed 
into  this  ancient  sea  and  went  to  form  the  sandy  and  earthy 
layers  of  the  southern  zone  of  rocks.  This  old  sea  itself  lasted 
a  very  long  time.  Its  shores  were  not  always  in  the  same 
place,  its  waters  not  always  of  the  same  depth.  The  limy 
layers  must  have  been  formed  when  the  water  was  clear.  Had 
there  been  any  mud  in  it  this  would  have  settled  to  the  bottom 
and  left  earthy  matter  with  the  limy  stuff  of  the  bottom.  Some 
of  the  limy  layers  abound  in  corals  which  we  may  often  see  in 
the  bits  of  the  rock  that  we  pick  up  now  with  impressions  of 
shelled  creatures  that  lived  in  the  sea  at  that  time.  Near 
Alpena  and  in  the  Garden  Peninsula  such  corals  abound.  It 
is  bv  studying  the  material  of  the  layers  and  the  remains  of 
the  living  things  found  preserved  in  them  that  we  learn  the 
story  of  the  region.  At  times  the  water  became  shallow  and 
broad  stretches  of  briny  marsh  alternated  with  pools  where  the 
salt  water  evaporated  in  the  sun,  leaving  deposits  of  rock 
salt  and  gypsum  that  are  preserved  among  the  layers  of  the 
southern  zone.  Thismust  have  been  at  times  when  the  climate 
was  as  dry  here  as  today  in  the  Southwest.  Later  the  land 
must  have  sunk  again,  for  new  layers  of  sandy  and  limy  rock 
are  found  above  the  salt.  Again  for  a  long  time  the  sea  with- 
drew, and  broad  swamps  covered  the  land.  The  water  must 
have  been  fresh  then,  for  the  swamps  were  full  of  plants  that 
could  not  live  in  salt  water.  There  were  ferns  and  moss-like 
plants,  but  giant  in  size,  quite  as  big  as  our  forest  trees.  Our 
trees,  and  the  plants  that  flower,  did  not  then  exist.  From 
these  ferny  swamps  have  come  our  beds  of  coal,  and  in  the 
coal  are  numberless  impressions  of  the  plants  that  tell  us  the 
story.  The  forests  grew  old  and  died,  sunk  and  lie  now  under 
layers  of  slate  and  sandstone;  other  similar  forests  grew  later 
above  them,  and  after  a  long  time  all  have  become  buried 
under  thick  rock  layers  which  must  now  be  penetrated  by 
shafts  to  get  out  the  coal.  There  are  many  signs  in  the  rocks 
that  each  rise  in  the  land  and  each  sinking  was  very  slow,  so 
slow  that  no  one  would  have  noticed  it  if  he  had  lived  through 


12 

that  time,  until  he  saw  dry  land  where  before  had  been 
water.  Just  such  slow  changes  are  now  going  on  about  us. 
The  land  at  Chicago  is  sinking  at  the  rate  of  nine  or  ten 
inches  a  century.  Of  course  that  is  very  little  in  a  year,  too 
little  for  any  one  to  notice.  It  is  plain  that  all  these  layers  of 
rock,  with  their  different  conditions  and  plants  and  animals, 
have  been  a  very  long  while  making.  Perhaps  it  is  easier  now  to 
see  that  the  hard  rocks  of  the  north,  which  were  there  before, 
and  whose  fragments  went  to  form  some  of  the  layers,  are 
thought  to  be  so  old. 

But  ages  and  ages  ago,  the  layered  rocks,  too,  had  hard- 
ened from  the  soft  mud  and  ooze  to  form  solid  rock  and  risen 
out  of  the  old  gulf  whose  waters  ran  off  southward  long  before 
there  were  any  men  on  the  earth,  before  there  were  even  trees 
or  animals  even  remotely  resembling  those  of  today ;  when  the 
nearest  thing  to  a  four-footed  animal  was  probably  a  huge 
thing  more  or  less  like  a  frog,  at  least  in  his  water-loving 
habits.  Ever  since  then  the  rocks  of  this  region  have 
remained  dry  land,  and  it  is  a  time  so  long  that  we  can- 
not measure  it  at  all  well.  A  being  who  had  lived  as  many 
centuries  as  any  man  is  likely  to  live  days  would  almost 
certainly  not  be  old  enough  to  remember  back  to  then. 
Day  and  night  there  have  been  through  all  the  interven- 
ing time,  and  seasons  of  heat  and  cold.  Rain  has  fallen, 
winds  blown,  and  frost  followed  on  sunshine  and  sunshine 
on  frost,  racking,  splitting  and  wasting  the  rocks  as  they 
are  wasting  today.  Have  you  ever  noticed  a  marble  stone 
in  the  graveyard?  Find  one  with  date  fifty  years  back 
if  you  can,  and  see  how  rough  and  cracked  it  is;  how  its  cor- 
ners and  edges  are  rounded  and  crumbled.  Marble  is  a  very 
soft  rock,  but  the  hardest  rocks  must  have  weathered  and 
crumbled  a  great  deal  since  the  remote  period  we  are  thinking 
of.  No  wonder  soft  rocks,  some  of  them  softer  than  the  mar- 
ble of  the  gravestones  and  having  salt  and  gypsum  among 
their  layers  for  the  rains  to  wash  away,  have  worn  into  great 
valleys  like  those  of  Lakes  Erie,  Huron  and  Michigan  on  the 
Monroe  rocks,  while  the  harder  Niagara  limestone  has  come 


13 

to  project  above  the  country  on  either  side  of  it  in  the  long 
ridge  referred  to.  No  wonder,  too,  that  great  quantities  of 
that  crumbled  powder  of  rock  that  we  call  earth  or  soil  have 
accumulated  over  the  ledges  for  the  plants  to  grow  on  and 
make  life  possible  to  us. 

In  the  Lake  country  the  differences  in  the  rocks  of  the 
two  zones  must  have  made  great  differences  in  the  landscapes. 
In  the  north  the  long-continued  weathering  sought  out  every 
softer  bit  of  the  crumpled,  disordered  rocks,  leaving  the 
harder  parts  standing  in  elevated  knobs  and  ridges.  In  the 
south  the  flat  layers  tend  to  make  the  surface  level  except 
where  the  streams  had  carved  their  valleys.  But  after  most 
of  the  long  time  elapsed  that  separates  us  from  the  period 
when  warm  salt  waters  reached  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  into 
northern  Michigan,  another  great  change  befell.  The  sea 
waters  had  now  shrunk  back  to  the  shape  of  the  present  Gulf, 
North  America  had  much  the  same  outlines  on  the  map  as 
now,  except  that  there  were  no  great  lakes, — all  sorts  of  lakes. 


Fig.  6.       Snow  on  ground  December  27,  1904 


14 


Fig.  7.       Snow  on  ground  January  10,  1905 


indeed,  were  scarce  then,  and  many  rivers  ran  in  courses 
other  than  today.  Yet  it  was  a  long  time  ago,  long  before 
the  beginnings  of  history.  The  change  came  in  with  a  great 
increase  of  rainfall,  causing  Great  Salt  Lake  and  the  neigh- 
boring hollows  of  the  great  basin  of  Nevada  and  Utah  to  fill 
and  overflow  into  the  Columbia  by  channels  still  plain  to  see 
among  the  mountains.  Possibly  the  winter  was  somewhat 
colder  here  than  now.  It  is  certain  that  much  increase  of 
winter  snowfall  occurred.  So  great  was  it  that  summer  heats 
could  not  melt  it  all,  and  accumulation  began  that  grew  from 
year  to  year.  Fig.  6  shows  the  snow  on  the  ground  Decem- 
ber 27,  1904.  Fig.  7  shows  it  two  weeks  later.  Where  the 
shading  is  cross-lined  the  snow  was  more  than  a  foot  deep. 
Evidently  it  snowed  in  that  fortnight.  The  snow  field  grew 
still  further.  Sometimes  it  covers  even  lyouisiana  for  a  day. 
Then  it  dwindles  again  and  fades  away  northward  until  in 
March  or  April  all  the  ground  is  bare.     This  is  a  stagnant  ice 


15 

sheet.  It  lies  where  it  falls  until  it  melts  away,  snow  at  the 
top,  but  before  the  winter  is  over,  ice  below.  In  days  we  call 
Glacial,  however,  it  failed  to  melt  all  summer  long,  and  year 
after  year  added  a  layer,  thin  or  thick  we  have  little  idea,  until 
it  reached  a  thickness  close  north  of  us  of  some  thousands 
of  feet,  thinning  to  a  southern  margin  along  the  Ohio  river. 
A  curious  feature  about  this  huge  heap  of  northern  snow  is 
that  besides  crushing  to  ice  of  its  own  weight  the  whole  mass 
flattened  down,  thrusting  its  edges  outward  like  a  mass  of 
pitch.  Mr.  Willard  D.  Johnson  has  imitated  this  on  a  small 
scale  by  cutting  away  a  wooden  barrel  from  the  pitch  it  con- 
tained as  it  stood  on  a  patch  of  sand.  That  pitch  did  just 
what  we  have  learned  by  observation  that  the  ancient  ice 
sheets  did, — flattened  down  and  thrust  out  its  edges,  scraping 
and  pushing  away  the  sand  in  every  direction.  Two  hundred 
years  ago  when  the  French  Academy  was  earnestly  discussing 
whether  the  earth  spheroid  was  oblate  or  prolate  (flattened  or 
pointed),  Childrez  declared  for  the  latter  view  because,  he 
said,  the  long-time  accumulations  of  snow  and  ice  about  the 
poles  must  amount  now  to  great  heaps  there  that  would  add 
notably  to  the  earth's  polar  diameter.  So  it  would  but  for  the 
property  of  ice  just  described  of  flowing  out  sidewise  as  it  flat- 
tens down  under  great  pressure.  The  polar  ice  caps  push  out 
their  margins  which  break  off  and  float  away  as  icebergs  toward 
the  equator  every  summer,  and  the  snow  heaps  there  can  prob- 
ably never  reach  up  more  than  a  mile  or  two  in  height.  A 
consequence  of  the  flattening  out  of  the  great  ice  heap  north 
of  us  was  an  enormous  sweeping  away  of  all  decayed  or  weak- 
ened rock  from  the  northern  region  to  accumulate  in  the  south, 
forming  the  deep  soils  of  the  prairie  states  in  which  now  lies 
the  center  of  population  of  the  country.  In  doing  this  it  blot- 
ted out  most  of  the  variety  of  landscape  that  the  weather  had 
wrought  in  the  flat  rocks. 

As  a  result  of  the  drift  coating  in  the  southern  peninsula, 
the  rocks  are  not  much  seen  there.  Whole  counties  have  no 
outcropping  ledge.  The  known  ledges  are  almost  invariably 
in  the  beds  of  rivers,  where  they  cause  falls,  and  towns  grow 


16 

up  with  suggestive  names  like  Grand  Rapids,  Big  Rapids, 
Grand  Ledge  and  Flat  Rock,  or  at  the  shores  of  the  lakes  as 
at  Point  aux  Barques,  on  the  tip  of  the  "thumb,"  or  in  Lit- 
tle Traverse  Bay.  Deep  well  borings  usually  encounter  rock 
at  a  moderate  depth,  and  we  have  had  to  learn  much  of  what 
we  know  about  it  in  this  way. 

The  rocky  "knobs"  of  the  northern  country  are  shown  on 
the  relief  map  all  about  the  shores  of  Lake  Superior,  where 
the  country  has  been  carefully  mapped  in  making  charts  for 
ships.  Hills  that  are  visible  from  the  lake  are  important  to 
vessels,  as  they  serve  as  landmarks  for  their  guidance.  Back 
from  the  lakes  and  through  all  the  hard  rock  country  these 
knob-like  hills  are  seen  everywhere,  but  the  country  is  much 
of  it  wilderness,  no  good  maps  exist,  and  we  should  not  know 
where  to  put  the  knobs.  Most  of  them  must,  therefore,  be 
left  out  of  all  maps  until  the  country  is  better  known.  The 
picture  of  a  hill  near  Marquette  (Fig.  3)  gives  a  good  idea  of 
them.  They  should  be  thought  of  as  dotting  the  hard-rock 
area  everywhere.  The  smaller  knobs  and  ridges  that  the 
relief  map  shows  in  the  lower  peninsula  of  Michigan  are  of 
sand  and  gravel,  moraines  left  by  the  ice  sheets  as  they  melted 
away.     Their  material,  like  most  of  the  surface  of  the  south- 


Hi 

im 

/;:;>  fm.    -€W^=            '^KKKF 

Fig.  8.       Morainic  hills  near  Eagle,  Wisconsin 


17 

€rn  zone,  is  bits  of  the  northern  ledges.  They  are  just  as 
characteristic  of  Wisconsin  and  southern  Ontario  as  of  Michi- 
gan, but  only  in  our  own  state  have  they  been  traced  out  well 
enough  to  put  them  in  on  the  map  in  their  right  places. 

These  knobs  and  ridges  of  moraine  make  most  of  the 
steeper  hills  of  the  southern  landscapes.  Fig.  8  shows  the 
appearance  of  such  moraines.  All  this  material  that  the  gla- 
ciers brought  down  from  the  north  is  known  as  the  Drift. 
Parts  of  it,  especially  near  the  hard-rock  country,  are  too 
sandy  for  the  most  successful  agriculture.  Forests  have  been 
the  best  crop  there  in  the  past,  and  may  perhaps  be  made  to 
abound  there  again.  Something  of  these  forests  is  still  left, 
as  will  be  shown  later.  Farther  south  the  land  shares  the 
excellent  quality  for  farming  of  northern  Ohio,  Indiana  and 
Illinois. 

That  the  land  is  higher  as  one  goes  farther  north  is  seen 
by  the  relief  map.  South  of  the  Saginaw  Valley  the  highest 
point  is  a  small  area  over  1300  feet  in  Oakland  county.  North 
of  the  valley  quite  a  large  area  exceeds  that  elevation  and  a 
small  region  on  the  boundaries  of  Osceola  and  Wexford  is 
above  1600  feet.  But  in  the  upper  peninsula  is  much  land 
well  above  that  level  and  1900  is  reached  and  passed  north  of 
Lake  Superior.  Peninsular  Ontario  shows  the  same  ascent  to 
the  north.  The  drainage  of  Lake  Superior  accordingly  goes 
south  into  Huron,  that  of  Lake  Huron  south  to  Lake  Erie  by 
St.  Clair,  but  Michigan  and  Erie  empty  to  the  north  against 
the  slope  of  the  land.  This  is  one  of  the  many  consequences 
of  the  glacier  work  here.  Of  old  the  whole  region  drained 
south  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  Lakes  Michigan  and  Erie  are 
now  walled  off  on  the  south  by  glacial  drift. 

/ 


II. 


OLD    BEACHES   AND    MORAINES. 

At  the  time  when  great  sheets  of  ice  lay  on  this  region, 
the  country  south  of  the  Ohio  was  so  warm  that  the  ice  all 
melted  before  reaching  it.  The  ice  here  crept  forward,  pushed 
by  the  weight  of  the  mass  accumulated  mountain  high  east 
and  west  of  Hudson  Bay.  But  for  a  long  time  there  was  a 
region  just  south  of  the  great  lakes  where  the  ice  melted  and 
ran  off  as  water  as  fast  as  it  crept  forward.  Since  the  ice 
dragged  quantities  of  drift  in  its  lower  portion,  causing  all 
this  region  to  be  coated  over  with  the  rock  fragments  from 
Canadian  ledges,  all  this  drift  must  have  dropped  at  the  line 
where  the  ice  melted.  Such  is  believed  to  be  the  origin  of  a 
long  low  ridge,  uneven  of  crest,  and  following  the  outline  of 
the  lakes  at  some  distance  that  is  traced  on  the  map  by  the 
heaviest  black  line  on  Fig.  9.  It  is  seen  that  the  front  of  the 
ice  was  uneven;  that  it  pushed  furthest  south  along  the  hol- 
lows now  occupied  by  lakes  and  bays.  Such  a  ridge  of  stony 
detritus  at  the  front  of  a  glacier  is  called  a  moraine.  Lines 
of  moraine  are  numerous  throughout  the  lake  country.  This 
is  one  of  the  plainest. 

As  the  climate  grew  warmer  the  front  of  the  ice  retreated. 
That  is,  it  melted  back  faster  than  it  crept  forward.  Lakes 
now  began  to  gather  between  the  moraine  and  the  new  front 
of  the  ice,  filling  the  basin  with  water  up  to  the  level  of  the 
lowest  notch  in  the  rim  of  moraine.  There  the  lakes  ran 
over.  As  all  the  country  to  the  north  was  covered  by  ice, 
hundreds  of  feet  thick,  this  overflow  had  to  go  south,  where 
it  all    found   its  way,  sooner   or   later,   into   the  Mississippi. 


19 

Many  such  lakes  were  formed,  with  shores  and  outlets  that 
changed  as  the  ice  kept  melting  back  and  uncovered  now  and 
then  a  new  and  lower  notch  in  the  rim,  or  allowed  two  of  the 
water  bodies  to  run  together.  Duluth,  Green  Bay,  Chicago, 
Saginaw  and  Toledo  must  each  have  had  one  of  these  ice- 
dammed  lakes,  draining  to,  the  southwest  and  excavating  with 
its  waters  the  channels  in  which  are  the  great  portages  between 
the  great  lakes  and  the  Mississippi. 

These  outlet  channels  have  thus  become  of  great  import- 
ance from  the  cities  they  have  fostered.  They  are  still  trace- 
able on  the  ground.  The  waves  of  these  lakes  cut  beaches 
on  the  slopes  of  the  moraine  that  held  them  in.  Such  beaches 
are  traceable  from  the  outlets  for  many,  many  miles.     One  of 


Fig.  9.       Moraines  and  old  lake  beaches 


OF  THE  A 

IVERSITY  I 


20 

the  lakes  that  has  left  a  very  visible  beach  is  traced  in  out- 
line on  Fig.  9  with  a  black  line,  the  area  of  the  lake  that 
made  it  by  cross-lining  over  the  land.  At  this  time  the  ice 
front  had  melted  far  enough  to  the  northeast  to  uncover  half 
of  Lake  Erie,  and  the  southern  third  of  Lakes  Huron  and 
Michigan.  Lower  land  was  now  uncovered  on  the  "thumb" 
of  Michigan  than  on  the  moraine  further  south,  and  across 
this  low  land  the  water  flowed  until  its  level  had  fallen  to  that 
of  the  Saginaw  lake.  This  in  turn  emptied  through  the  val- 
ley of  the  Grand  river  into  the  lake  at  Chicago.  The  relief 
map  shows  how  the  elevation  and  shape  of  the  land  surface 
moulded  these  bodies  of  water.  The  water  finally  escaped  to 
the  Mississippi  by  the  valleys  of  the  Desplaines  and  Illinois. 
A  number  of  such  beach  ridges  are  found  one  above  another, 
corresponding  to  various  lake  levels,  with  escape  at  various 
outlets.  The  most  important  line  of  travel  in  the  United 
States,  the  Mohawk  valley,  was  in  part  excavated  by  the 
waters  of  the  great  lakes  escaping  in  this  way  to  the  Hudson 
river  when  the  ice  had  mostly  withdrawn  from  the  lakes,  but 
still  blocked  the  St.  Lawrence  channel. 

The  waters  of  the  ice-dammed  lakes  were  doubtless  kept 
muddy  by  the  silt  from  the  lower  layers  of  the  melting  ice. 
The  flat-lying  clays  about  Chicago,  Saginaw  and  Detroit  were 
formed  by  the  slow  settling  of  these  sediments  to  the  bottom. 
The  shore  ridges  and  moraines  have  given  the  rivers  of  the 
lake  country  a  curious  arrangement  (See  Fig.  4).  The  Mau- 
mee,  that  flows  northeastward  into  Lake  Erie  at  Toledo, 
receives  its  headwater  tributaries  much  as  the  shank  of  a  fish- 
hook is  met  by  its  barb,  the  St.  Joseph  from  the  northeast  and 
the  St. Mary  from  the  southeast.  Another  pair  of  tributaries 
lower  down  the  Maumee  behave  in  the  same  way.  So  the  Cass 
and  Tittabawassee  join  the  Saginaw,  and  quite  similar  is  the 
flow  of  the  St.  Louis  at  Duluth,  the  Wolf  river  near  Green  Bay, 
and  the  Chicago  river  at  Chicago.  The  tributaries  in  each 
case  are  obliged  to  go  along  behind  the  ridge  to  the  place 
where  the  main  stream  breaks  through  before  they  can  begin 
to  approach  the  lake. 


21 


Very  different  from  these  are  the  old  shore  lines  about  the 
northern  lakes.  Here  the  beach  is  a  strong  feature  in  the 
landscape,  rising  in  distinct  terraces  from  the  present  lake 
shore,  as  seen  in  the  picture  (Harbor  Beach,  Fig. 10),  and  at 
Petoskey  and  Mackinac  island.  One  of  these  is  indicated  on 
the  diagram  by  a  solid  black  line  about  the  northern  shores  of 
the  lakes,  with  numbers  giving  its  elevation  above  the  lake 
from  place  to  place.  The  outlet  was  to  the  northeast  on  the 
79th  meridian  just  north  of  the  46th  parallel,  across  the  Cana- 
dian lake  Nipissing  to  the  Ottawa  river  and  the  St.  Lawrence, 
which  was  now  free  of  ice.  It  will  seem  strange  that  the 
water  should  find  its  outlet  there  where  the  land  is  now  high 
above  the  lake,  but  it  is  certain  that  the  land  in  the  north 
was  lower  then  than  now.  The  shore  lines  must  have  been 
as  level  as  any  modern  lake  shore  when  made,  while  now 
they  rise  higher  and  higher  as  we  go  to  the  north.     The  ele- 


HiG.  10.       Elevated  beach.  Harbor  Beach,  Mich. 


22 

vations  of  the  beach  above  the  lake  surface  show  this.  It 
seems  a  very  surprising  thing,. but  it  cannot  be  doubted,  that 
the  land  has  risen  out  of  the  water  in  the  north  without  rising 
so  much  in  the  south,  pretty  much  as  a  trap-door  in  the  floor 
rises  most  at  the  edge  away  from  the  hinges.  There  are 
many  ways  of  showing  that  this  sort  of  thing,  a  rising  or 
sinking  of  land,  is  happening  in  many  parts  of  the  world  all 
the  time.  It  is  quite  as  certain  as  that  the  earth  is  turning 
around  on  its  axis,  or  that  we  are  swinging  around  the  sun  at 
a  tremendous  speed,  and  just  as.  hard  to  realize.  The  move- 
ment in  this  case  is  really  very  slow  and  very  slight.  It 
sounds  a  good  deal  when  we  say  the  laud  has  risen  100  feet 
more  in  Georgian  bay  than  in  Alcona  county,  but  the  distance 
is  150  miles,  and  the  slope  of  such  a  tilting  only  8  inches  to 
the  mile.  If  you- go  out  and  stand  on  a  beach  that  has  a  slope 
of  8  inches  to  the  mile  it  looks  perfectly  flat.  Moreover,  it  has 
been  tilting  for  a  good  many  hundred  years  before  it  got  so 
much  out  of  level  as  that.  The  movement  is  neither  so  great 
nor  so  rapid  as  the  ordinary  settling  of  the  ground  that  cracks 
the  walls  of  our  houses.  When  those  old  shore  lines  were 
bathed  by  the  waves,  the  basin  of  our  lakes  was  down  to  the 
northeast  and  the  lake  waters  were  high  at  that  side.  For  the 
same  reason  the  Nipissing  outlet  was  lower  than  the  St.  Clair 
at  Port  Huron,  and  the  waters  of  the  upper  lakes  went  to  the 
sea  without  passing  through  Erie  or  Ontario  at  all.  In  this 
channel  from  Georgian  bay  to  the  Ottawa  river  there  is  now  a 
low  divide  between  the  Nipissing  and  Ottawa  drainage  over 
which  the  early  French  explorers  made  a  portage  in  their  trips 
to  the  lakes,  for  Lake  Erie  was  discovered  later.  Since  the 
day  of  the  old  north  lakes  the  basin  has  been  tipping  back  to 
the  south,  the  northern  shores  coming  higher  and  higher  out 
of  water,  and  the  water  in  the  south  is  steadily  advancing  on 
the  land. 

The  tiny  lakes  that  dot  the  surface  of  Michigan  and  Wis- 
consin, thousands  in  number,  are  also  due  to  the  presence  of 
ancient  glaciers  here.  South  of  the  outer  moraines  of  the  ice 
sheets  such  lakes  are  unknown  either  in  America  or  Europe. 


23 


Fig.  U. 


Sand  dunes  about  the  lakes 


They  are  due  partly  to  hollows  among  the  irregular  heaps  of 
drift  left  on  the  surface  of  the  country  and  partly  to  the  burial 
in  gravel  and  sand  of  ice  blocks  from  the  glaciers  as  they  at 
last  melted  away  and  covered  the  country  with  streams  of 
muddy  and  sand-laden  water. 

A  feature  of  the  lakes  of  which  Michigan  enjoys  almost  a 
monopoly  is  the  sand  dune  coast,  best  developed  on  our  shore 
of  Lake  Michigan  between  the  44th  and  45th  parallels  (Fig. 
11).  Ontario's  fragment  is  less  well  developed  for  lack  of 
sand.  Wherever  a  shore  that  is  well  supplied  with  sand  stands 
facing  the  prevalent  westerly  winds,  the  sand  is  flung  up  on 


24 

shore  by  the  waves  of  storms  and  the  winds  then  pile  it  up 
along  the  coast  in  long  series  of  sand  hills  and  hummocks. 
How  the  wind  tends  to  drive  these  landward  is  well  shown  by 
a  prostrate  pine  in  the  dune  at  Pentwater  as  it  appeared  in  the 
summer  of  1902  (Fig.  12).  The  tree  grew  erect  above  the 
spot  where  the  roots  are  now.     The  sand  in  and  on  which  it 


Fig.  12.       Dune  at  Pent  water,  Mich. 

grew  has  long  ago  been  blown  to  eastward.  The  tree  was 
first  blown  over  in  the  same  direction,  and  before  the  footing 
was  removed  by  blowing,  the  tip  had  become  firmly  embedded 
in  the  position  in  which  we  now  find  it.  The  chief  use  men 
make  of  the  dunes  is  to  build  summer  homes  on  them  for  the 
coolness  of  the  winds  from  the  lake  that  piled  them  up.  The 
picture  (Fig.  13)  shows  both  the  cottages  and  the  strong  wind 
in  the  trees.     Sand  abounds  greatly  on  this  eastern  shore  of 


25 


Lake  Michigan,  building  long  sweeping  borders  to  the  land. 
The  sand  is  not  merely  moved  landward  np  the  dune,  but 
travels  northward  along  the  shore  in  the  play  of  the  waves. 
In  this  travel  alongshore  it  has  swept  across  the  mouths  of 
the  lower  peninsula  rivers  entering  this  lake  and  sought  to 
bar  them  from  the  lake.  Thus  each  of  these  rivers  has  a 
lake  at  its  mouth  inside  the  line  of  the  dunes,  and  access  to 
the    Big    Lake    must    be    maintained    by  dredging  a   channel 


Fig.  13.       Houses  on  dune.  Pentwafer.  Mich. 

across  the  beach.  Such  lakes  are  admirably  shown  on  the 
chart  of  Lake  Michigan  published  by  the  U.  S.  Lake  Survey 
(Campau  Building,  Detroit,  20c.)  characterizing  this  whole 
shore  line.  Ludington  has  fine  examples  of  the  dunes  at 
Ep worth  Heights,  and  the  bar  partly  enclosing  the  Pere  Mar- 
quette Lake  is  of  this  origin. 

Figure  14  shows  some  of  the  principal  ancient  outlets  of 
the  lakes.  Those  numbered  1  draining  the  lakes  formed  near 
Duluth,  Chicago  and  Detroit  in  the  southern  and  western  ends 


26 


of  the  basins  when  most  of  the  lake  country  was  still  under  ice ; 
those  numbered  2,  leading  off  the  lake  waters  to  the  valley  of 
Mohawk  and  Hudson  when  the  ice  had  bared  most  of  the  lake 
basins  but  still  blocked  the  St.  Lawrence ;  and  3,  emptying  all 
but  Erie  at  a  later  period  to  the  great  arm  of  the  sea  that  then 
occupied  the  basin  of  Lake  Ontario  and  the  valley  of  the  St. 
Lawrence.  The  discharge  of  the  great  lakes  is  considerable 
enough  to  wash  out  a  broad,  deep  channel  such  as  those  of 
the  St.  Clair  and  Detroit  rivers  of  today,  and  all  these  older 
channels,  now  abandoned  by  the  waters  that  carved  them, 
exerted  distinct  influence  on  early  lines  of  exploration  and 
communication  and  upon  subsequent  history.  Abandoned 
river  channels  always  drain  their  rain  water  off  in  opposite 
directions  at  the  two  ends  with  a  divide  somewhere  between. 
The  divide  in  most  of  these  channels  is  that  separating  the 
basins  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  Mississippi,  represented  in 
the  figure  by  the  dotted  line.  Thus  the  old  channel  at  the 
west  end  of  Lake  Erie   drains  northeastward  to  Lake   Erie  by 

the  Maumee  and  south- 
westward  by  the  Wa- 
bash with  the  divide 
between  these  rivers 
where  Ft.  Wayne  now 
stands.  In  early  days 
when  travel  was  by 
canoe,  parties  went  up 
the  Maumee  from  Lake 
Erie,  made  a  portage 
(or  carry)  across  the 
divide  and  on  down 
the  Wabash.  These 
portages  were  natural  camping  spots,  which  travelers  would 
naturally  tend  to  reach  before  nighttall.  Here  parties  traveling 
in  opposite  directions  would  often  meet  and  exchange  neces- 
sities, here  the  trader  would  often  pitch  his  camp  and  defend 
his  precious  goods  by  a  stockade  or  fort,  under  whose  shelter- 
ing walls  clustered  the  huts   ot  the    half-breed  families  of  the 


-^         1  u 

p*i 

i\ 

Fig.  14.        Older  outlets  of  the  great  lakes 


U  IN  I  V  C.  )-^  ^  I 

OF 


27 


Fio    15.     T/ie  Hurons  (Iroquois)  about  Lakes 

Erie  and  Ontario  with  friendly  Alonquin 

tribes  in  most  of  the  lake  country 


voyageurs;  here  grew  up  the  earliest  important  towns  of  the 
region,  Chicago  is  the  best  example  of  such  a  history.  The  easy 
portage  at  this  point  early  made  it  a  pathway  to  the  interior 
of  the  continent.  The  French  traveled  over  the  lakes  to  the 
southwest,  looking  for  a  passage  to  the  Pacific.  Their  set- 
tlements were  mere  forts  along  this  route,  utilized  later  for 
the  highly  profitable  fur 
trade,  it  is  true,  but  with- 
out real  colonization  such 
as  characterized  the  Eng- 
lish settlements  along  the 
Atlantic  coast. 

The  French  first  entered 
the  lake  country  by  the 
portage  from  the  Ottawa  to 
Lake  Nipissing  along  the 
line  of  the  old  northern  out- 
let. There  is  no  doubt 
they  were  guided  in  their  choice  of  this  northern  route  by  the 
possession  of  the  lands  about  Lake  Ontario  and  Lake  Erie  by 
the  redoubtable  Huron  tribes  (Fig.  15),  while  the  upper  route 
was  through  the  country  of  friendly  tribes  of  the  great  Algon- 
quin family.  To  these  facts  is  due  the  importance  of  Mackinac 
and  the  Sault  Ste.  Marie  in  the  early  history  of  Michigan. 
Mackinac, Sault  Ste.  Marie,  Green  Bay,  Chicago  and  St.  Joseph 
were  reached  by  the  whites  long  before  Detroit.  LaSalle  did 
not  make  his  first  trip  up  Lake  Erie  until  1679.  The  settle- 
ment of  Detroit,  22  years  later,  seems  to  have  come  of  a  desire 
to  cut  off  the  English  of  the  New  York  colony  from  the  fur 
trade  ot  the  northern  lakes.  Nicollet  made  the  first  post  at  the 
Sault  and  coasted  as  far  as  Green  Bay  in  1635.  Marquette  38 
years  later  passed  over  the  same  route  and  on  to  Lake  Win- 
nebago, up  the  Fox  river  to  the  Wisconsin  by  the  portage 
where  the  town  of  Portage,  Wis.,  now  stands.  This  is  a  region 
of  lakes.  In  times  of  heavy  rain  the  Wisconsin  sent  surplus 
waters  down  the  Fox  river  to  Green  Bay.  On  his  return  from 
the  Mississippi  in  1674  Marquette    ascended  the    Illinois  and 


28 

Desplaines  to  the  Chicago  portage.  Here,  too,  the  landis  very 
flat  and  in  wet  seasons  loaded  boats  floated  from  Lake  Michigan 
to  the  Mississippi.  In  dry  weather  they  must  be  carried  thirty 
miles  In  1679  we  find  LaSalle  at  St.  Joseph,  probably  mak- 
ing the  portage  to  the  Kankakee  from  South  Bend  and  getting 
to  the  Mississippi  by  the  Illinois.  It  was  an  explorer's  trip. 
He  had  no  map  to  show  how  far  he  was  going  out  of  his  way. 
As  the  divide  lies  just  beyond  Michigan  territory  none  of  these 
old  portage  towns  are  included  in  the  present  state  of 
Michigan. 

Traffic  on  the  lakes  then  as  now  largely  passed  through 
Michigan  waters  between  outside  points  on  either  hand.  The 
portage  at  Sault  Ste.  Marie  differs  from  the  others  in  not  stand- 
ing on  a  divide  but  at  the  rapids  in  which  the  waters  of  Lake 
Superior  descend  to  the  eighteen  feet  lower  waters  of  Lake 
Huron. 


III. 


CLIMATE 

Michigan  and  southwest  Ontario  consist  of  peninsulas 
projecting  into  lakes.  A  result  of  this  position  is  to  mitigate 
extremes  of  temperature.  Water  is  slower  to  heat  up  than 
land,  so  a  hot  day  in  summer  is  hotter  on  shore  than  over  the 
lakes.  One  of  the  hottest  days  of  the  year  1904  was  the  24th 
of  August.  Fig.  16  shows  diagramatically  all  the  highest  tem- 
peratures observed  in  the  reg^ion  that  day.  The  greatest  heat 
wfis,  of  course,  south  of  the  Lakes,  wh-^re  the  thermometers 
rose  above  90°.  Next  north  of  this  comes  a  belt  which  has 
been  shaded  with  rulings  in  the  diagram,  where  temperatures 
between  80°  and  90°  were  noted.  Two  outlying  islands  of 
this  shading  are  seen  in  southern  Michigan,  and  three  in 
peninsular  Ontario.  These  isolated  warm  spots  lie  a  little 
back  from  the  lake  shores,  or  touch  them  only  to  eastward. 
West-facing  shores  on  both  Huron  and  Michigan  are  seen  to 
be  cooled  by  the  winds  that  prevail  here  from  the  west.  Erie, 
too,  shows  something  of  the  same  sort.  This  has  brought  us 
across  the  blank  to  the  dotted  area  of  temperatures  under  70°, 
perhaps  the  greater  part  of  the  coast  country  on  the  upper 
lakes.  In  this  again  lie  islands  of  more  than  70°,  in  Wiscon- 
sin, a  little  back  from  the  lake,  and  in  Upper  Michigan, 
where  it  only  touches  the  lake  shore  to  eastward  as  before. 
It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  shore  on  the  map  wlxere  a  trip 
straight  inland  would  not  bring  us  to  higher  tempera^ture.  I 
have  no  doubt  this  would  have  been  true  in  the  Canadian 
country   east    of  Lake  Superior,   though   the  country  is  little 


30 


settled,  and  we  have  no  knowledge  of  thermometers  there. 
The  cooling  effect  of  the  lakes  is  apparent  in  every  part  of  the 
diagram.  Lake  Erie,  which  is  barely  60  feet  deep,  does  not 
cool  its  shores  so  effectively  as  the  other  lakes,  which  are 
much  deeper.  In  each  of  the  lakes  the  water  is  observed  to 
be  coldest  where  it  is  deepest.  Out  on  mid  I^ake  Michigan, 
near  the  45th  parallel,  there  is  a  patch  of  cold   water,  so  well 


Pig    16.    Maximum  temperatures  of  the  afternoon  of  Aug.  24, 1904,  a  very  hot  day  showing 

less  heat  on  the  shores 

known  to  masters  of  vessels  that  they  fill  their  water  casks 
there.  This  "Cold  Island"  is  over  the  greatest  depth  of  the 
lake.  Out  on  Lake  Superior,  far  the  deepest  of  all,  the  water 
keeps  a  temperature  of  39°  to  41°  in  midsummer.  Only  near 
the  shores,  where  the  sun  penetrates  to  the  sandy  bottom,  is 
the  water  warm.     Not  only  is  the  effect  of  these  cool    waters 


31 


borne  to  eastward  on  the  prevailing  west  winds,  but  they 
extend  their  influence  shoreward  on  hot  summer  days  with  the 
landward  breathing  of  the  lake  breezes  that  then  prevail. 

This  tempering  of 
summer  heat  by  the 
lakes  must  not  be 
supposed  to  make 
Michigan  cooler 
than  places  east  and 
west  of  it.  On  an 
average  it  has  about 
the  same  tempera- 
ture as  places  in  the 

over  50         45-50  40-45  35-40  ^^^^^^      latitude      fur- 

Fig.  17.     Mean  annual  temperature,  1871-1896  •,■,•, 

ther  from  the  lakes. 
Fig.  17  will  make 
this  clear.  It  records 
the  average  temper- 
atures of  the  period 
1871-1896  as  record- 
ed by  observers  of 
the  U.  S.  Weather 
Bureau.  Neither 
does  it  mean  that 
our  summers  are 
cool.  One  time  or 
another  Michigan 
has  known  as  high 
temperatures  as 
southern  Louisiana. 
The  reader  should 
make  this  out  on 
Fig.  18 ,  which  shows 
the  distribution  of 
the  highest  temper-  ,(^105         over  10s         95-100 

atures     recorded     in    F'gIS.    The  highest  temperatures  recorded  from  1871  to  1896 

eastern  North    America,   from  1871  to  1896.      It  appears    by 


90-95 


32 


this  that  neither 
southern  Louisiana 
nor  Michig^an  north 
of  the  southernmost 
counties  have  exper- 
ienced greater  heats 
than  100°  during 
that  period.  Usual- 
ly, of  course,  Louis- 
iana is  the  warmer 
of  the  two,  yet  not 
greatly.  Fig.  19 
shows  the  average 
of  the  highest  tem- 
peratures reached 
each  July  day  in 
the  25  years.  From 
this  we  may  say  that 
the  region  west  of 
Saginaw  Bay  is  like- 
ly to  have  a  tem- 
perature of  75°  to 
80°  any  July  afternoon,  Louisiana  more  than  90°.  On  Jan- 
uary mornings,  Louisiana's  average  is  45°,  lower  Michigan's 
15° (Fig.  20),  For  its  coldest  moments,  Louisiana  has  known 
temperatures  from  zero  to  ten  degrees  above ;  lower  Michigan 
from  twenty-five  to  thirty  degrees  below.  (Fig.  21).  In  a 
word,  Michigan  reaches  summer  heats  on  any  day  in  July 
almost  as  great  as  those  of  Louisiana,  and  the  hottest  record 
is  the  same  for  both  places,  but  January  sends  down  our  ther- 
mometers thirty  degrees  lowierthan  Louisiana's. 

Cold  winters  and  hot  summers  characterize  our  climate, 
but  as  Fig.  16  showed  us  the  great  lakes  mitigate  the  greatest 
summer  heats  along  their  actual  shores.  Facts  for  particular 
localities  may  be  read  from  the  diagrams  in  the  same  way. 

In  winter  the  effect  of  the  lakes  is  reversed.  Water  can- 
not cool  below  32°.     Air  below  that  temperature  must,  when 


80-85  85-90  75-80  under  75 

Fig.  19.    Mean  of  the  hottest  temperatures  observed  on 
July   days.  1871-1896 


33 


near  the  lakes,  be  warmed  by  radiation  from  the  water.  The 
winds  should  distribute  this  mitigating  effect  a  moderate  dis- 
tance inland  from  the  lake  shore.  Let  us  look  over,  in  this 
connection,  the  diagram  of  the  lowest  temperatures  observed 


Fig.  22.      Minimum  temperature  of  the  morning  of  Jan.  M,  1904,  showing  less  cold 

near  the  shore 


in  January  24,  1904,  when  a  cold  wave  was  central  in  north- 
west Wisconsin.  Its  effects  reached  into  Ontario,  but  were 
notably  lessened  at  every  lake  shore,  while  the  interior  of 
Ontario  has  10°  below,  inland  parts  of  the  lower  peninsula  of 
Michigan  15°  below,  with  35°  below  on  the  Wisconsin  high- 
lands. These  mitigating  effects  do  not  indeed  reach  far  from 
the  water,  but  the  shore  counties  have  extremes  of  tempera- 
ture much  moderated  by  them.     It  is  on  such  days  as  August 


34 


24,  that  Chicago  people  become  eager  to  flit  across  the  lake 
to  Michigan  shore  resorts.  Such  summer  coolness  constitutes 
an  asset  of  singular  value  in  that  its  continued  use  and  enjoy- 
ment does  not  involve  any  diminution  of  future  availability. 
In  this  it  surpasses  mines,  lands,  forests,  or  fisheries,  and  is 
to  be  classed  rather  with  beautiful  scenery,  good  iUvStitutions, 
and  a  reputation  of  citizens  for  good  character. 

In  the    main    our  temperatures  are  of  the  class  usually 


iOy\J 

30-20 


^ 

'L'Tr 

\U 

/ 

-\ 

wS" 

yfiy 

^ 

m 

^^g 

^X 

i 

/Ty'/' 

^ft 

^^ 

^ 

1 

M^ 

^^ 

^^ 

j/O 

\ 

^ 

3 

lis^l. 

->-  _       ^ 

\ 

J 

^N>^ 

4 

^} 

1 

-^ 

i^40 

^^^     ^3     ZZ3 


^      ^    ^^ 


20-10 


0  to  -10 


Fig.  20.    Mean  of  the  coldest  temperatures  observed  on 
January  days  1871-1896 


-20  to -10  -10  to -30       -30  to -40         -40  to -SO 

Fig.  21.    The  lowest  temperature  recorded  1871  to  1896 


grouped  as  temperate,  because  their  average  values  are 
moderate,  but  their  ranging  through  extremes  is  their  most 
striking  character.  These  extremes  occur  not  merely  in  the 
transition  from  day  to  night,  and  from  summer  to  winter,  but 
also  in  the  spells  of  weather  that  sweep  in  unending  proces- 
sion   from   the    Pacific   to   the   Atlantic,    and    distinguish   our 


35 


weather  from  the  experiences  of  regions  nearer  the  equator 
The   columns   of  numbers   at 


the    side    of  this  page  are  the        Mi5ANDAiLvTEMPKRATURh:s,i904 
averages  of  the  thermometer  Ypsilanti.        Havana, 

readings  for  each  of  the 
twenty-four  hours  every  day 
in  January  and  July  at  Ypsi- 
lanti and  at  Havana,  Cuba, 
in  1904.  As  the  eye  runs 
down  the  January  values  for 
Ypsilanti,  it  is  struck  by  the 
great  changes.  In  fact,  if 
we  group  the  days  as  cold  or 
warm,  according  as  their  tem- 
peratures are  below  or  above 
17°,  the  mean  of  the  whole 
month,  it  appears  to  have  con- 
sisted of  four  cold  spells  and 
four  warm  spells;  cold:  2  to 5, 
10,  17  and  18,  and  24  to  29; 
warm:  6  to  9,  11  to  16,  19  to 
23,  and  30  and  31.  The  dif- 
ference from  warm  spell  to 
cold  is  often  greater  than  from 
day  to  night.  A  glance  shows 
that  Havana  lacks  such  spells 
in  summer  and  winter,  while 
our  summer  shows  them  much 
diminished.  This  is  seen  again  by  comparing  the  highest 
and  lowest  temperatures  of  the  month,  Ypsilanti  showing  a 
difference  in  winter  of  34°,  in  summer  of  27°,  and  Havana  9° 
and  4°.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  individual  days.  To 
show  this  I  have  selected  the  coldest  and  warmest  dates  at 
each  place  in  the  two  months,  and  give  now  the  temperatures 
for  every  two  hours  those  days,  with  the  somewhat  surpris- 
ing   showing    that   not    merely    is    our  cold  day  nearly  65° 


Day 

Jan. 

July 

Jan. 

July 

1 

19° 

58° 

67° 

80° 

2 

7 

62 

69 

80 

3 

1 

65 

71 

77 

4 

3 

73 

71 

78 

5 

7 

73 

68 

80 

6 

21 

67 

69 

79 

7 

26 

66 

68 

80 

8 

32 

70 

70 

81 

9 

22 

69 

66 

80 

10 

15 

72 

68 

80 

11 

18 

75 

73 

80 

12 

23 

67 

72, 

80 

13 

24 

69 

71 

80 

14 

22 

73 

65 

SO 

15 

21 

76 

65 

79 

16 

22 

76 

67 

80 

17 

12 

82 

68 

80 

18 

6 

85 

68 

80 

19 

21 

81 

71 

78 

20 

34 

75 

71 

79 

21 

32 

72 

71 

79 

22 

31 

67 

73 

80 

23 

23 

65 

74 

81 

24 

0 

65 

66 

79 

25 

1 

68 

72 

80 

26 

8 

71 

72 

SO 

27 

5 

71 

72 

80 

28 

8 

67 

72 

77 

29 

10 

66 

74 

78 

30 

18 

73 

7Z 

78 

31 

23 

75 

74 
70 

77 

Mean 

17 

71 

79 

Lowes 

t  u 

58 

65 

77 

Highe 

St  34 

85 

74 

81 

36 


HouRLv  Temperatures,  1904. 

Ypsilanti.  Havana. 


Hour 

Jan.  24. 

July  18. 

Jan.  15 

July  8 

2 

5° 

76° 

61° 

77° 

4 

3 

76 

60 

76 

6 

0 

76 

61 

74 

8 

1 

86 

65 

76 

10 

2 

90 

67 

84 

Noon 

5 

95 

68 

87 

2 

5 

95 

70 

87 

4 

2 

95 

69 

86 

6 

3 

90 

68 

85 

8 

5 

86 

65 

82 

10 

6 

83 

63 

82 

12 

6 

80 

60 

80 

colder  than 
their 's,  but  our 
hot  one  con- 
siderably warmer. 
This  would  not 
always  happen, 
however.  The 
July  of  1904  was 
2°  or  3°  cooler 
than  usual  at 
Havana,  and  a 
little  warmer  than 
usual  at  Ypsi- 
lanti, while  the  day  cited  was  an  exceptionally  warm  one. 
But  all  the  data  given  serve  to  justify  the  statement  that 
our  climate  is  one  of  hot  summers  and  cold  winters,  mitigated 
on  the  lake  shores  by  the  more  constant  temperatures  of  the 
lakes.  But  these  spells  of  weather  have  more  in  them  than 
heat  and  cold.  The  warm  ones  bring  most  of  our  rain  and 
snow,  while  the  cold  ones  give  us  fine  bracing  days, 
under  a  sky  unsurpassed  even  in  Italy.  And  though  the 
lowering  skies  of  the  warm  ones  are  less  agreeable,  they  alone 
make  life  possible  here.  As  they  swing  eastward  across  the 
continent  the  winds  blow  in  toward  them  in  every  direction, 
forming  a  great  eddy  often  a  thousand  miles  across.  Thus  it 
happens  that  it  is  preceded  as  it  draws  near  us  by  easterly  and 
southeasterly  winds  that  bring  moisture  from  the  Atlantic, 
and  then,  if  it  pass  by  on  the  north,  by  southerly  winds  from 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  From  these  most  of  our  rainfall  is 
obtained.  All  of  southeastern  North  America  is  well  watered 
for  the  same  reason,  and  the  lake  country  lies  near  the  north- 
west margin  of  this  region  of  sufficient  rain.  North  of  Lake 
Superior  the  annual  rainfall  soon  falls  away  to  25  inches,  a 
scanty  amount.  South  of  that  lake  the  whole  region  of  our 
study  has  an  annual  fall  of  rain  and  melted  snow  of  33  or  34 
inches,  abundant  for  successful  agriculture.  The  great  lakes 
are  to  be  regarded  as  mighty  pools  of  this  rainwater,  standing 


Z1 

awaiting  its  chance  to  run  off  by  Niagara  to  the  sea.  From 
their  surface  it  is  believed  that  as  much  as  20  to  30  inches  are 
evaporated  annually,  and  of  this  there  is  reason  to  believe 
some  4  or  5  inches  fall  a  second  time  on  the  lake  country. 
The  lakes  do  not  cause  the  rainfall  on  their  shores,  but  they 
may  well  increase  it  by  a  few  inches  as  explained  above.  For 
this  reason  rainfall  maps  of  the  whole  continent  show  a  dis- 
tinct widening  of  the  rainy  eastern  area  toward  and  over  the 
great  lakes,  which  seem  to  possess  the  beneficient  power  of 
enabling  us  to  receive  as  rain  twice  over  a  portion  of  the 
moisture  brought  us  on  the  winds  from  the  Atlantic  and  the 
Gulf.  We  should  now  turn  to  Fig.  23,  the  diagram  of  our 
annual  precipitation.  The  data  cover  the  last  25  years,  and 
though  still  imperfect  in  some  parts  of  the  area,  the  main  facts 
are  doubtless  as  represented  here.  Perhaps  the  most  conspicuous 
feature  of  the  map  is  the  general  increase  of  the  rainfall  to  the 
south,  of  which  we  have  just  spoken.  Next  to  that  in  inter- 
est come  the  patches  of  increased  rainfall  on  every  distinct 
elevation  that  stands  to  southeast  of  one  of  the  lakes.  The 
relief  map  in  the  November  issue  (Fig.  4)  must  be  referred 
to.  The  Ontario  highland  has  40'^  of  rain  between  its  crest 
and  Lake  Huron.  This  is  some  of  the  water  reprecipitated 
from  the  lakes  as  is  shown  by  rains  at  Saugeen  and  Parry 
Sound,  with  northwest  winds.  In  our  lower  peninsula,  the 
highlands  north  and  south  of  the  Saginaw-Grand  Valley  are 
similarly  favored  on  their  northwest  slopes;  the  highest  point 
of  the  whole  peninsula,  in  Osceola  county,  having  40^'  to 
windward  like  the  slope  in  the  south  from  Berrien  up  through 
Cass  and  St.  Joseph,  to  Branch.  Ball  Mt.,  the  highest  part 
of  the  southern  highland,  has  a  similar  increase  over  neigh- 
boring counties.  Similarly,  the  highland  of  northern  Wis- 
consin has  an  area  of  35^^  while  the  Mesabi  Range,  northwest 
of  Lake  Superior,  will  probably  be  found  to  have  larger  pre- 
cipitation than  the  country  about,  as  soon  as  gauges  are  set  up 
there,  thanks  to  its  considerable  elevation.  To  leeward  of 
these  elevations  are  noted  the  scantier  records — under  30^^ — 
on  the  thumb  of  the  lower  peninsula,  and  other  patches  south- 


38 


ward  from  there  to  the  west  end  of  Lake  Erie,  as  well  as  the 
west  shore  of  Lake  Michigan,  from  Milwaukee  to  Manitowoc. 
The  most  curious  adjustment  of  the  precipitation  to  the  topog- 
raphy will  be  found  south  of  Lake  Erie,  where  the  rapid  rise 
of  the  land  sends  up  the  precipitation  as  suddenly  from  35^'  to 


HiG.  23.    Rain  and  snow^  Blank  areas  have  from  SO  to  35  inches,  dotted  areas  less  than 
SO,  lined  areas  from  35  to  40,  and  cross  lined  areas  over  40  inches  for  the  average 
year  between  1880  and  1904 

40.  The  dryer  belt  extending  into  Pennsylvani  a  between  the 
80th  and  81st  meridians,  coincides  with  a  long  valley  in  the 
upland,  an  ancient  drainage  line  that  is  easy  to  make  out  on 
the  relief  map.  Newcastle  and  Pittsburg  are  the  two  stations 
in  the  valley.  Further  adjustments  will  be  found  if  explana- 
i-ions  are    sought  on  the  relief  map  for  the    40^^  close   east   of 


39 


the  80th   meridian  in  the  same  region  and  the  44^^    near  82 
30^  west  longitude. 

The  rain  usually  comes  rather  heavier  in  the  growing 
season  than  at  other  times,  as  the  diagrams  of  Fig.  24  show. 
In  occasional  years  this  does  not  happen,  and  it  is  probably  less 
pronounced  in  the  patches  to  windward  of  the  chief  elevations. 


fKr. 

HJJ 
Mi) 
NDJ 


La  Crosse        Detroit 
5  10       .  5 


MARQUETTt  DuLUTH 


s 


Lansing 
5 


Fig   24.    Inches  of  rain  and  melted  snow  that  fall  in  February,  March,  April,  May,  June 
July,  and  so  forth,  showing  that  our  heavier  rains  come  in  summer 

Thunderstorms  are  the  occasion  of  much  of  the  summer  rain- 
fall, but  are  much  less  frequent  than  in  the  prairie  states  to 
the  southwest.  Tornadoes,  the  cyclones  of  the  newspapers, 
rarely  come  into  our  territory.  The  windfalls  of  the  older 
forests  were  silent  evidences  of  their  occasional  passage,  and 
a  few  have  been  since  recorded. 


Fig    25.    Pears  in  1902  hil.  :6     Peaches  in  1902 

Dark  lining  over  20,  cross  lines  over  10  and         Bark  lininii  over  500.  cross  lines  over 
light  lines  over  o  bushels  per  square  mile  100  bus  els  per  square  mile 


Fig.  27.    Plums  in  1902  Fig.  28.    Cherries  in  1902 

Dark  lining  over  10,  cross  lining  over  S  and     Dark  lining  over  5,  cross  lining  over  2,  light 
light  lines  over  1  bushel  per  square  mile  lines  over  1  bushel  per  square  mile 


Fig  29.    Strawberries  in  1902 
Dark  lining  over  50,  cross  lining  over  i 
light  lines  over  10  bushels  per 
square  mile 


Fig.  .10     Grapes  in  1902 
Dark  lining  over  10,0(X)  lbs.,  cross  lines 
over  1.000  lbs.,  light  lines  over  200 
lbs.  per  square  mile 


IV. 


THE    FRUIT   BELT 


The  prevalent  west  winds  from  Lake  Michigan,  with  their 
mild,  moist  air  have  doubtless  made  the  southwestern  coun- 
ties of  our  state  the  fruit  belt  of  the  region.  Perhaps  the 
simplest  presentation  of  this  fact  is  in  the  group  of  diagrams, 
Figs.  25  to  30,  showing  the  crop  of  pears,  peaches,  plums, 
cherries,  strawberries  and  grapes  in  Michigan  in  1902. 
Raspberries  and  blackberries  show  the  same  distribution. 
Three-quarters  of  our  fruit,  other  than  apples,  comes  from  the 
shore  counties  between  Grand  Traverse  Bay  and  the  Indiana 
boundary  (see  Fig.  31)  and  two-thirds  from  the  four  southern 


All  Michis^an 

1 

1 

2 

1 

3                           4 

1 

All  Wisconsin 

— 

1 

Fig.  31.       Millions  of  bushels  of  fruit,  1902.       The  fruits  are,  for  Michigan—strawberries, 
blackberries,  raspberries,  peaches,  pears,  plums  and  cherries;  for  Wisconsin— Straw- 
berries, blackberries,  raspberries,  currants   and  grapes,  the  only  ones  reported. 
Michigan  grapes  are  omitted,  being  only  known  in  pounds 

counties — Kent,  Allegan,  Van  Buren  and  Berrien.  Not  merely 
are  May  frosts  prevented  from  injuring  the  fruit  by  mild  airs 
from  the  Lake,  but  a  too  early  swelling  of  the  buds  in  March 
warm  spells  is  likewise  avoided.  Lake  Michigan  literally 
blows  hot  and  cold  or  rather  warm  and  cool ;  the  fact  being 
that  the  lake  water  changes  much  less  in  temperature  than 
the  land  and  so  moderates  extreme  temperatures  on  shore, 
either  of  heat  or  cold.  Nearness  to  Chicago  markets  must 
exercise  a  very  stimulating  effect  on  the  crop  of  the  southern 


42 


counties,  but  the  Lake  counties  of  Indiana,  Illinois  and  Wis- 
consin have  no  share  in  the  business,  although  still  nearer. 
This  appears  more  clearly  in  Fig.  32  which  gives  in  thousands 

of  bushels  the 
peach  crop  of 
the  region. 
Only  Michigan 
and  Ohio  give 
the  data  by 
counties.  In- 
diana, how- 
ever, reports 
the  number  of 
bearing t  re  es, 
which  are  noted 
here  for  the 
Lake  country, 
also  in  thous- 
ands. Call  it  a 
tree  bears  two 
bushels  or  even  three  or  four,  and  the  inferred  yield  is  still 
far  from  great.  The  whole  state  of  Illinois  only  produces  as 
much  as  the  tenth  among  Michigan  counties;  Wisconsin  not 
enough  to  report  at  all.  From  statements  made  to  me  there  I 
judge  that  Ontario  produces  considerable  quantities  of  peaches. 
It  certainly  is  situated  as  well  as  our  fruit  counties,  but  no 
statistics  are  available  on  this  point.  The  Ohio  figures  show 
an  especially  large  yield  from  Ottawa  county  and  this  again 
illustrates  the  advantage  of  position  to  leeward  of  the  Lake,  as 
Ottawa  peaches  come  mostly  from  the  peninsula  north  of  San- 
dusky and  the  American  islands  in  Lake  Erie.  All  the  facts 
go  to  show  the  importance  of  the  west  winds  from  the  Lake 
for  fruit  raising  rather  than  nearness  to  the  Lake  or  the  mar- 
ket. Fig.  30  shows  that  Van  Buren  and  Berrien  lead  the 
state  in  producing  grapes;  as  a  matter  of  fact  they  produce 
twenty-seven  million  of  the  state's  thirty-four  million  pounds 
(see  Fig.  33).      So  California,  under  the  west  winds  from  the 


Fig.  32.    Tfiousands  of  bushels  of  peaches,  1902 


43 

Pacific,  is  far  in  the  lead  of  American  states  as  grape  and  wine 
producer.  Similarly  situated  are  Chile  and  Peru,  the  finest 
grape  countries  in  South  America,  and  Portugal  and  the  Bor- 


All  Michigan 
Fruit  Counties 


Fig.  33     Millions  of  pounds  of  grapes,  1902 


deaux  country  in  Europe.  It  is  not  the  least  interesting  fea- 
ture of  the  study  of  the  home  country  that  it  quickly  leads  us 
to  see  things  abroad  in  a  clearer  light.  Our  fruit  industry  has 
had  great  developments  in  the  last  few  years  and  its  adjust- 
ment to  geographic  features  seems  to  assure  its  future  as  long 
as  the  central  states  are  the  seat  of  a  great  population.  The 
imperative  need  of  the  present  is  prompt  and  economical 
refrigerator  car  service  to  the  markets.  Fro.n  an  examination 
of  Detroit  market  prices  it  is  certain  that  this  crop  was  worth 
on  the  farm  from  three  to  four  million  dollars  in  1902. 

The  apple  crop,  worth  over  five  millions,  was  much  more 

scattered.  Apples  are  raised 
with  us  wherever  men  live, 
their  keeping  quality  making 
them  a  significant  item  of 
food  for  home  consumption 
as  well  as  for  marketing. 
The  principal  sources  of  the 
crop  are  shown  in  Fig.  34. 
The  fruit  belt  produced  but 
sixteen  percent  of  the  whole. 
SUGAR   BEETS 

Fig.  34.    Apples    in  1902.    Dark  lining,  more       Not  a  little    of    the  hundred 
than  900,   cross  lines  more   than  600,  and 
light  lines  over  300  bushels  per  square  mile      and  fifty   million   dollars  WOrth 

of  vegetable  products  of  Michigan  enters  into  manufacturing 
processes,  which  add  another  hundred  and  thirty  million  of 
dollars  to  their  value.  Usually  these  manufacturing  processes 
have  followed  on  the  farm    and    forest    occupations  and  have 


J-r  ^\ '■> 

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44 

been  located  near  the  supplies  of  raw  material.  The  diagram 
of  wheat  production  shows  that  the  breakfast  food  factories  of 
Battle  Creek  are  in  the  heart  of  the  wheat  country.  Grand 
Rapids,  too,  grew  into  eminence  as  a  furniture  center  while 
still  in  the  belt  of  abundant  hardwood  lumber.  The  lumber 
is  now  mostly  cut  off  and  large  supplies  are  imported  from 
outside  the  state. 

The  beet  sugar  industry  differs  from  these  in  that  the 
beets  are  raised  to  ship  to  some  factory  rather  than  the  factory 
placed  where  beets  are  raised.  This  tends  to  concentrate  the 
sugar  beet  farming  as  no  other  agricultural  product  is  concen- 
trated.    The  diagram  (Fig.  35)  shows  the  large  production  of 


Fig.  35.     Sugar  beet  crop  of  1903.    Darkest  shade  is  140  tons  to  a  square  mile,  then  60,  20, 
and  2  tons.    Circles  are  factories 

the  Saginaw  valley  along  a   line  of  dense   population,  and  a 
diminishing  production  as  one  recedes  from  Bay  county  in  any 


45 


direction.  Bay  county,  where  the  industry  now  centers,  is 
rather  north  of  the  best  farming  country  for  other  products,  as 
the  other  diagrams  show.  For  the  present,  beet  raising  is 
largely  centered  about  the  larger  factories.  This  is  because 
of  the  newness  of  the  industry  in  the  state.  Only  California 
up  to  1904  and  Colorado  in  that  year  produced  more  beet  sugar 
50  100  150  200  250 


U.  S,.  cane 
U.  S..  beet 
California,  beet 
Micliigan.  beet 


Fig.  36.     Sugar  crop  in  thousands  of  tons  in  190S-4,  Michigan's  banner  year 

than  Michigan,  which  makes  about  a  quarter  of  the  total  quan- 
tity produced  in  the  United  States.  Evefi  including  the  cane 
sugar  of  Louisiana,  Michigan  is  the  third  producer  in  the 
Union,  and  cane  sugar  is  rapidly  losing  in  importance  the 
world  over.  In  1854  there  were  but  182,000  tons  of  beet 
sugar  produced  in  the  world.  In  1904-5,  of  a  total  world-pro- 
duction of  nine  and  a  half  million  tons  of  sugar,  five  million 
were  made  from  beets.  Michigan  built  her  first  sugar  factory 
in  1897.  In  1903  she  produced  57,064  tons  of  beet  sugar  in 
twenty  factories;  in  1904,  46,659.  All  the  world  has  benefit- 
ted by  the  substitution  of  the  beet  for  cane  as  a  source  of 
sugar,  as  it  has  reduced  the  price  to  one-half  that  formerly 
paid.  The  mitigating  effect  of  the  Lakes  makes  Michigan 
favored  territory  for  the  beet,  from  the  sensitiveness  of  the 
plant  to  the  frost.  A  mean  summer  temperature  of  70°  seems 
to  be  about  what  it  demands.  California  has  its  climate  tem- 
pered by  the  winds  that  prevail  from  the  Pacific.  It  may  be 
that  the  western  counties  along  Lake  Michigan  would  prove  as 
favorable  to  this  cultivation  as  the  Saginaw  Valley. 

AGRICULTURE 

The  dominant  geographic  note  that  appears  in  all  the  fol- 
lowing diagrams,  as  in  those  of  fruit,  is  their  strict  limitation 
to  the  southern  two-thirds  of  the  area.  We  see  here  a  result 
of  the  twofold  geography  described   in    the    earliest  pages  of 


46 


these  Materials.  Nevertheless,  Wisconsin,  southern  Michi- 
gan and  southwest  Ontario  are  great  agricultural  regions. 
Not  quite  a  quarter  of  the  states  of  the  Union  excel  ours  in 
the  total  value  of  their  agricultural  products.  Most  of  these 
have  their  whole  extent  available  for  farming. 

Fig.  Zl  gives  the  relative    values    of    our  main  farm  pro- 


Hay. 
Corn 

Wheat 

Oats 

Potatoes 

Wool 

Poultry  and  Eggs 

Beans 


ii 


?0 


30 


Fig.  37.     Valxie  of  Michigan  farm  products,  millions  of  dollars,  1903 

ducts.     Fruits,  it  wi^l  be  remembered,  amount  to  ten  millions 
more  and  milk  and  meat    to    other    large    items  of  which  the 


92  91  90  89  a»  W  M  M  «4  MM»I  «0 


K  81  SO  79 


Fig    38.    Corn  in  1902.    Darkest  shade.  3200  bushels  to  1  square  mile,  then 
640  and  64  bushels 

value  cannot  be  ascertained.        Beans    are    produced    here  in 
greater  quantity  than  anywhere  in  tlie  country.     The  pepper- 


47 

mint  produced  from  some  of  the  western  bog's  is  of  very  mod- 
erate total  value. 

Perhaps  the  most  instructive  of  the  distributive  diagrams 
is  that  for  corn,  Fig.  38,  in  respect  to  the  sharp  limits  to  the 
agricultural  country  on  the  north.  The  sensitiveness  of  the 
corn  to  sunshine  seems  to  account  for  the  fairly  even  east  and 


HiG.  39.     Wheat  in  1902.     Darkest  shade,  640  bushels  to  amwre,  then  160 
and  64  bushels 


west  lines  that  separate  the  grades  of  production  roughly 
along  the  42nd  and  44th  parallels  of  latitude.  The  wheat  crop, 
Fig.  39,  is  much  more  scattered  as  well  as  much  less  import- 
ant. Here  Ontario  is  seen  to  excel  American  territory,  lati- 
tude for  latitude  as  well  as  in  its  oat  crop,   Fig.  42. 

Figs.  .^5  to  45  are  original  diagramb  made  on  the  basis  of  farm  and  agricultural  statistics 
published  by  Ontario,  Michigan,  Ohio,  Indiana  and  Illinois  for  1902-3.  New  York,  Minnesota 
and  Pennsylvania  appear  to  publish  no  such  data  and  Michigan  has  suspended  their  publi- 
cation with  the  year  1902-3.  All  similar  diagrams  in  the  current  text-books  are  copies  of  dia- 
grams taken  from  the  Statistical  Atlas  of  the  U.  S.  Census.  Most  of  these  date  from  the 
year  1890  and  the  rest,  though  often  dishonestly  supplied  with  later  date-;,  from  1900,  and  will 
until  about  1912.    None  of  them  include  Canadian  data. 


48 


Michigan's  wheat  crop  has  fallen  off  steadily  since  1880, 
if  we  make  exception  of  single,  unusual  years.  The  acreage 
in  wheat  in  the  state  in  1903  was  little  more  than  half  that  of 


10     20       30 


40       50 


60 


70        80        90      100 


1840 
1850 
1860 
1870 
1880 
1890 
1900 
1901 
1902 
1903 


Fig  40.    Michigan  Cereals  (wheat,  oats  and  corn),  millions  of  bushels 


1880.  This  falling  off  is  very  likely  the  cause  of  the  rather 
irregular  distribution  of  the  crop  with  us.  In  that  case 
Ontario  is  not  having  the  same  experience,  as  the  yield  there 
is  more  evenly  distributed.  How  much  of  this  falling  off  is 
due  to  diversion  of  interest,  to  fruit  and  stock  raising,  how 
much  to  the  development  of  manufacturing  industries  is  a 
subject  of  inquiry  for  agriculturist  and  economist  rather  than 
for  the  geographer.       It  is  not  due  to  a  falling  off  in  the  pop- 


1840 
1850 
1860 
1870 
1880 
1890 
1900 
1905 


1  2 


Fig.  41.    Population  Michigan  in  millions  since  1840 


ulation.  The  great  cereals,  corn,  wheat  and  oats  are  still 
produced  in  quantities  roughly  corresponding  to  the  density 
of  the  population.  There  seems  good  geographic  ground  for 
expecting  that  considerable  crops  of  grain  will  always  be  pro- 
duced here.  The  market  is  near,  means  of  transportation 
good,  and  much  soil  seems  entirely  suitable  with  proper  meth- 
ods of  agriculture.     The  demand   for  grain  is    permanent  and 


44 

bound  to  increase.  Fig.  40  illustrates  the  combined  crops  of 
corn,  wheat  and  oats  since  the  state  was  settled.  Fig.  41 
shows  for  the  same  period  the  number  of  citizens  that  produced 
the  crops.  Except  for  the  year  1880,  there  is  much  similarity 
between  the  two  diagrams;  1880  may  have  been   an  unusually 


Fk).  42.    Oats  in  1902,     Darkest  shade  is  S200  bushels  to  a  square  mile, 
then  (>40,  IftO  and  64  bushels 

favorable  year  and  1903  an  unfavorable  one.  All  such  data 
collected  and  compiled  for  the  single  year  of  the  census  are 
liable  to  such  accidental  influences  on  their  values  that  make 
them  not  wholly  suitable  to  use.  An  average  value  for  each 
ten  years  would  be  much  preferable.  Yet  it  is  clear  enough 
from  the  figures  that  there  has  been  little  increase  of  cereal 
crops  within  Michigan  territory  for  many  years.  Ontario  is  as 
notable  for  its  oat  crop,  Fig.  42,  as  northern  Illinois.  One 
wonders  if  the  frequent  derivation  of  its  citizens  from  Scotland 
has  influenced  this  crop. 

Potatoes,  Fig.  43,  are  widely  grown,  none  the  less  prob- 
ably because  they  enter  so  directly  into  the  food  of  all  the  peo- 


50 


n         »i      "»       89         M        «/        at       as        mm        «        «i 

an              7«             76 

49 

a 

U 

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a 

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1 

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tr 

49 
4S 

47 
46 

44 
4} 
42 

41 

fefr^ 

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1 

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g6 

t  J. 

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/   1 

1 

B 

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P 

H 

u 

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1 

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B 

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b 

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B 

I 

■'if--''^ 

pi 

Cj^^^^^ 

^ 

ta 

^^H 

91               90               d9              as                37              66              as                64              &3               K 

ei   .       ao           7s 

Fig.  43.    Potatoes  in  1902.    Darkest  shade,  500  bushels  to  a  square  mile,  then  100 


9!  91  90  89  88  87 


89  84  81  a2  81  BQ  79  76 


91  50  69  aa  67  66  85  84 Oi 62 


Fig.  44.    Cattle  in  1902.    Darkest  shade  is  75  to  a  square  mile,  then  50,  25  and  10 


51 


Fig.  45.     Sheep  in  1902.    Darkest  shade  ,50  to  a  square  mile,  then  25  and  10 


Fig.  46.     Swine  in  1902.    Darkest  shade  100  to  a  square  mile,  then  50  and  25 


52 

pie  that  an  effort  is  likely  to  be  made  to  supply  at  least  home 
demands  on  every  farm.  The  best  potato  yield  seems  to  occur 
well  to  the  north  of  the  regions  favored  by  grain. 

Cattle,  sheep  and  hogs,  Figs.  44,  45  and  46,  are  raised 
about  where  the  cereals  are  cultivated.  Ontario  is  seen  to  be 
as  successful  in  stock  raising  as  in  raising  cereals.  There 
seems  to  be  distinctly  more  sheep  raising  on  the  uplands  of 
Ontario,  of  Michigan  south  of  Saginaw  Bay,  and  of  Ohio  south 
of  Lake  Erie.  Perhaps  there  will  be  a  future  development  of 
this  industry  in  the  other  uplands,  in  Michigan  southwest  of 
Grand  Traverse  Bay  and  of  northern  Wisconsin. 

The  foregoing  should  be  regarded  as  a  review,  not  of 
agriculture  in  this  region,  but  of  the  geographic  distribution  of 
its  great  agricultural  staples.  They  with  the  kindred  lumber 
crop  of  the  northern  country  represent  an  annual  value  of  from 
150  to  175  million  dollars,  now  and  probably  always  the  main 
natural  productions  of  the  state  and  the  basis  of  industries 
that  create  the  still  larger  manufactured  values. 


IV. 


FORESTS 


When  Michigan  was  first  settled  it  was  covered  by  a 
superb  growth  of  hardwood  in  the  southern  three  or  four  tiers 
of  counties,  broken  only  by  lakes  and  occasional  openings, 
while  northward  from  this  line  and  across  Ontario  and  Wis- 
consin stretched  the  finest  forests  of  pine  and  mixed  pine  and 
hardwood  on  the  continent.  There  were  splendid  trees,  hem- 
locks twelve  feet  around  and  white  pines  thirteen  to  fifteen 
about,  three  feet  above  the  ground  and  rearing  their  summits 
sometimes  150  feet  in  the  air.  Great  groves  of  solid  pine  or 
mingled  growth  of  elm,  maple,  sycamore,  poplar  and  hemlock 
darkening  the  soil  beneath  and  keeping  it  free  from  under- 
growth, alternated  here  and  there  with  dense  wet  growths  of 
tamarack  and  cedar,  the  forest  dark  but  passable,  the  swamps 
light  but  trackless,  like  the  occasional  windfalls  marking  the 
passing  of  storm  winds  that  were  fortunately  rare,  but  each 
one  recorded  in  an  overthrown  part  of  the  forest.  Of  this 
great  forest  the  pine  is  mostly  gone.  Probably  the  Ward 
estate  in  northwestern  Crawford  county  has  the  only  untouched 
pine  wood  in  the  southern  peninsula.  Of  mixed  growth, 
culled  over  for  the  little  pine  it  once  contained,  there  can  be 
few  areas  in  the  lower  peninsula  finer  than  the  forests  of 
southern  Cheboygan,  eastern  Otsego  and  western  Montmor- 
ency counties.  Lumbering  began  at  Port  Huron  in  1833. 
The  output  of  St.  Clair  county  for  that  year  was  four  million 


54 

feet.  The  industry  crept  along  the  shore  into  Saginaw  Bay 
to  the  Saginaw  Valley  that  was  long  the  seat  of  an  enormous 
lumbering  activity.  In  1888,  the  great  year  of  the  business, 
Michigan  produced  nearly  four  billion  three    hundred  million 


1850 
1860 
1870 
1880 
1890 
IQOO 
1904 


10 

2C 

3C 

40 

5( 

)             60 

70 


Fig.  47.    Lumber  cut  in  Mlchipan,  millioiu  of  dollars 


feet  of  lumber,  in  large  part  white  pine.  Since  that  time  the 
product  has  steadily  diminished  as  the  forests  have  vanished 
before  the  lumberman's  axe.  In  1904,  over  one  billion  six 
hundred  million  feet  were  cut,  but  of  this  three-quarters  was 
hemlock  and  hardwood.  This  product  is  estimated  to  be 
worth  fifty-four  million  dollars,  but  a  portion  of  this  value  has 
been  given  in  the  various  processes  of  sawing,  planing  and 
finishing  the  logs  into  manufactured  lumber.  Since  1884, 
more  than  fifty-six  billion  feet  of  lumber  have  been  made  in 
the  state,  and  thirty-six  billion  shingles.  A  better  concep- 
tion of  the  meaning  of  these  numbers  will  be  had  when  we 
think  that  Michigan  is  said  to  consume  two  billion  feet  of 
lumber  a  year  at  present.  Vast  as  the  cut  has  been,  Michigan 
is  still  second  only  to  Wisconsin  in  this  industry.  The  tim- 
ber diagram  attempts  to  show  where  well  informed  men  believe 
there  is  now  in  1905  the  best  standing  timber  in  the  Great 
Lake  region.  It  is  only  an  estimate.  No  forest  survey  has 
been  made,  except  for  Wisconsin.  The  black  areas  in 
Ontario  aud  Roscommon  and  Crawford  counties,  Michigan, 
are  forest  reserves,  where  old  trees  are  preserved  or  new  plan- 


55 

tations  attempted.  Comparison  with  the  diagrams  of  popula- 
tion and  farm  products  shows  how  widely  in  the  north  forests 
take  the  place  of  the  southern  farms.  In  Ontario,  the  com- 
plete removal  of  forests  in  the  lake  peninsula  corresponds  well 
with  the  large  farm  returns  from  the  same  district,  while  the 
dense  forests  towards    Hudson    Bay  are    in    the    same  region 


Fig.  48.    Standing  timber  in  1905.       Cross  lined  areas  have  much   good  lumber, 

single  lined  and  dotted  areas  have  less  and  less.    Forest  reserves  in  black.    Not 

based  on  any  survey,  but  the  estimate  of  competent  men 

where  population  and  agriculture  are  alike  wanting.  The 
lumber  diagram  shows  where  the  lumber  of  1904  has  been 
manufactured.  The  reports  being  from  sawmills,  the  lumber 
is  often  reported  a  long  way  down  stream  from  the  forests 
where  it  grew,  as  along  the  Mississippi  river  down  which  the 
logs  were  rafted  as  far  as  Rock  Island,  Illinois.  All  show 
clearly  the  transference  of  the  great  undertakings  of  the  Great 


56 


Lake  comitrv  from  the  lower  peninsula  of  Michigan  to  Georg- 
ian Bay  and  Wisconsin.  It  is  readily  understood  that  unim- 
proved lands  predominate  in  the  north,  often  more  than  90 
per  cent  of  all  the  area.     It  is  beginning  to  be   realized  now 


Fig   49.     Lumber  made  in  1905,    Solid  circles  are  Pine,  open  circles  Hardwood, 
and  triangles  Hemlock.     Large  marks  indicate  a  hundred  million  feet  each, 
small  ones  ten  million  feet.    Data  from  American  Lumberman,  Jan.  21, 1904 

that  much  of  this  land  ought  to  remain  unimproved  here  as  in 
the  older  states  and  in  Europe,  that  it  is  not  good  farm  land, 
while  it  will  yield  a  continuous  crop  of  timber  for  all  time  if 
protected  from  fire  and  trespass  and  cut  over  as  the  timber 
matures,  without  waste. 

Of  delinquent  tax  lands,  the  state  has  some  six  million 
acres  left  on  its  hands,  much  of  it  thin,  sandy  soil  where  pine 
grew,  where  fire  followed  the  lumberman  and  where  agricul- 
ture will  never  yield  a  crop  of  such  value  as  the  lumber  that 
may  be  grown  on  it.  It  is  three  townships  of  this  land  that 
have  been  set  aside  under  the  protection  of  the  state  Forestry 


5.7 


Commission    as    the  state's    first    forest    reserve.     Ontario's 
liberal  reserve  will  be  noticed.  ir, 

MINERAL   PRODUCTS    OF    MICHIGAN 

In  1903  Michigan's  mines  yielded  a  value  of  fifty-six 
million  dollars,  much  the  greater  part  of  which  consisted  of 
iron  and  copper. 

One-tenth  of  the  world's  iron  ore    and    one-sixth  of  the 


1850 

1860 

.., 

1870 

-. 

- 

1880  ' 

._... 

.— r 

- 

1890 

1900 

^ 

1904 

^^^^ 

Fig.  50.    Copper  mined  in  Michigan,  thousands  of  tons 

world's  copper  was  produced  that  year  in  this  state;  ten  mil- 
lion tons  of  iron  ore,  worth  over  twenty-five  .  million  dollars, 
and  ninety-six  thousand  tons  of  copper,  valued  at  another 
twenty-five  millions.  Both  minerals  come  from  the  Hard 
Rocks  of  the  northern  region,  where  mining  is  the  predomin- 
ant industry.  The  copper  comes  from  the  Keweenaw  penin- 
sula that  projects  into  Lake  Superior  near  the  middle  of  its 
southern  coast.  The  so-called  Copper  Range  is  easily  recog- 
nized here  on  the  relief  map. 


1850 
1860 
1870 
1880 
1890 
1900 
1903 


1 

2 

4 

5 

( 

3 

7      S 

^      H 

- 

— 

— 



— 

FIG.  51.     Iron  ore  mined  in  Michip an,  millions  of  tons 


The  iron  is    mined  a  little  further  south  toward  the  Wis- 
consin boundary.     Both  metals  are  won  in  steadily  increasing 


58 

quantities.  At  the  beginning  of  1905,  nearly  $500,000,000 
worth  of  copper  and  more  than  $200,000,000  worth  of  iron  ore 
had  been  produced  within  the  state.  Up  to  1887,  Michigan 
was  the  leading  producer  of  copper  in  the  United  States  as 
also  of  iron  ore  up  to  1902.  Since  those  dates  she  is  second 
to  Montana  in  copper  and  Minnesota  in  iron,  not  that  her  own 
production  shows  any  sign  of  falling  off,  but  that  of  the  other 
two  states  has  had  an  enormous  increase.  Michigan  has 
increased  her  copper  output  two  and  a  half  times  since  1886, 
but  Montana  five  times.  So  our  state  is  raining  twice  as  much 
iron  as  she  did  ten  years  ago,  but  Minnesota  ten  times  as 
much. 

The  Minnesota  ranges  also  belong  to  the  hard  rocks  of 
the  northern  Lake  region,  west  of  Lake  Superior.  The 
deposits  have  the  advantage  of  lying  near  the  surface  in  great 
dirt-like  beds,  so  soft  that  it  can  be  taken  out  by  steam 
shovels  directly  into  railroad  cars  as  soon  as  the  surface 
gravels  are  taken  off.  Such  mining  goes  faster  and  is  much 
cheaper  than  the  usual  process  of  constructing  deep  shafts 
andJDlasting  out  hard  ore.  There  are  still  vast  quantities  of 
this  soft  ore  in  tlie  Minnesota  ranges,  but  the  quality  is  not 
equal  to  that  of  Michigan  ore.  The  ten  million  tons  of  Mich- 
igan  ore  taken  out  in  1903  were  valued  at  over  twenty-five 
million  dollars,  while  the  fifteen  million  tons  of  Minnesota 
ore  were  worth  less  than  twenty-seven  million  dollars.  Cop- 
per and  iron  centers  are  all  shown  on  the  diagram  of  mineral 
resources  as  well  as  the  lines  over  which  the  iron  ores  are  sent 
to  the  coal  fields  of  Pennsylvania,  where  coal  and  limestone 
are  at  hand  to  smelt  it.  The  whole  product  passes  through 
the  canals  about  the  rapids  at  Sault  Ste.  Marie  and  down  the 
lakes  to  Erie  ports  in  lanes  as  well  defined  as  a  path  upon 
land.  Commonly  enough  in  the  season  one  may  see  these 
vessels  stretching  out  in  a  long  line  to  the  horizon  where 
patches  of  smoke  indicate  that  still  others  are  beyond.  The 
shipping  ports,  Duluth,  Two  Harbors,  Superior,  Ashland, 
Marquette  and  Escanaba  have  developed  great  facilities  for 
handling  this  commodity.       The   ore  is   stored  in  great  cribs 


OP  TH! 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


59 


along  the  dock,  from  which  it  falls  by  its  own  weight  to  the 
steamers  below.  These  are  built  especially  to  carry  ore,  and 
are  of  a  type  of  their  own,  quite  unlike  the  ocean  steamers 
that  carry  all  sorts  of  cargo.  Figure  53  shows  this  well.  The 
engines  are  well  back  in  the  stern,  leaving  the  middle  of  the 
vessel  clear  free  for  the  ore    that    is    poured    in  through  long 


92  91  90  89,  68  8/  86  85  84  8J  82  81  80  79  ?« 


Fig.  5i     Minerals  in  the  Lake  country  1904      Solid  triangles  show  iron  mining 

points,  solid  circles  smelting  cities.      Dots  in  circles  are  "principal  shipping 

points.  Open  triangles  show  salt  production,  and  size  indicates  importance. 

The  large  dots  in  the  coal  rocks  are  active  mines.    Gypsum  and  cement 

are  indicated  by  name  where  they  occur 

rows  of  hatches  into  the  hull  of  the  ship  which  is  quite  with- 
out the  many  room-like  subdivisions  of  ocean  steamers.  This 
enables  great  scoops,  operated  by  steam,  to  take  out  the  cargo 
almost  as  rapidly  as  they  were  loaded.  Anyone  who  will 
figure  it  out  how  many  loads  for  a  5000-ton  vessel  there  are 
in  the  twenty-five  million  tons  of  Lake  Superior  ore,  will  have 


60 


a  better  idea  of  the  commercial  activity  of  the  lakes,  especially 
when  he  adds  mentally  some  thought  of  the  movement  of 
grain  and  lumber.  Of  course  the  ores  might  be  carried  by 
rail,  but  at  greatly  increased  cost  and  the  presence  of  the 
great  Lakes  between  the  coal  fields    of   Pennsvlvania  and  the 


Hio.  53.     Lake  Steamer— St.  Clair  River,  May,  190£ 

iron  deposits  of  the  northern  lakes  is  a  vast  advantage  to  the 
people  of  this  country,  who  use  immense  quantities  of  iron 
and  make  a  use  of  copper  that  is  rapidly  increasing  with  the 
increasing  use  of  electricity. 

The  last  ten  years  have  seen  a  cement  industry  spring  up 
in  Michigan  in  which  the  state  is  already  third  among  the 
United  States  and  the  business  grows  rapidly.       Nearly  three 


61 


million  dollars'  worth  was  made  in  1903,  not  a  little  of  which 
went  into  the  construction  of  admirable  walks  in  many  a 
Michigan  town  and  village.  The  uses  of  cement  have  multi- 
plied of  late  years,  especially  in  bridge  and  building  construc- 


1896 
]898 
1900 
1902 
1903 


2 

i 

6 

8 

10 

12 

I'l 

16 

18 

2 

. 

j 

- 

^^ 

^_ 

^^ 

^_ 

^^ 

.^ 

^_ 

^_ 

.^ 

^^ 

^^ 

^^  ^^ 

1 
1 

"" 

__ 

.«_ 

...^ 

„^^ 

„_ 

G^ 

^_ 

^ 

_ 

.I. 

... 

i_^ 

m 

^_ 

_ 

_ 

_ 

_ 

Cement  mi'le  in  Mlchioan.  huwlreds  of  thousamls  of  barrels 


tion.  There  are  materials  in  the  marls  of  the  countless  lake- 
lets and  in  the  extensive  limestone  deposits  of  the  state  for  a 
great  future  output,  and  the  market  is  increasing. 

Salt  was  recognized  here  from  the  earliest  times.  When 
the  state  was  admitted  to  the  Union  in  1837,  seventy-two 
sections  of  salt  spring  land  were  granted  to  the  new  state  from 
the  National  land,  providing  that  they  were  selected  before 
1840.  The  selection  of  these  lands  and  the  study  of  their 
possibilities  was  the  first  undertaking  of  Douglas  Houghton, 
the  first  state  geologist.  This  remarkable  man  recognized  all 
the  chief  mineral  resources  of  the  state  and  pointed  out  the 
lines  for  their  development.  In  almost  every  case,  experience 
has  proved  the  wisdom  of  his  plans.       The  salt  springs  have 


1870 
1880 
1890 
1900 

1901 
1902 
1903 


12  3  4  5  6  7 


Fio.  ss.    fialt  iiinnvfartnred  hi  Micliiaan.  millions  of  barrels 


their  origin  in  the  layers  of  salt  among  the  rocks  that  under- 
lie the  state.  The  rainwater,  percolating  through  the  soil  and 
rocks,  dissolves  the  salt  and  brings  it  to  the  surface  in  occa- 


62 


sional  springs.  The  process  of  manufacturing  the  salt  is 
mainly  one  of  getting  rid  of  the  water  again  from  brine  pumped 
up  from  wells  and  the  great  item  of  expense  that  of  the  fuel 
needed  to  evaporate  it.  For  many  years  Michigan  led  the 
country  in  this  industry,  but  since  1902  she  has  been  second 
to  New  York.  The  business  has  here  been  growing  less  and 
less  profitable  to  the  manufacturers,  being  now  regarded  as 
hardly  more  than  an  inexpensive  way  of  disposing  of  the 
waste  wood  or  lumber  mills.  In  1903  the  product  fell  off 
from  eight  to  four  million  barrels  and  the  lead  in  the  business 
went  from  the  Saginaw  Valley  to  Ludington  and  Manistee  on 
Lake  Michigan.  It  is  significarit  that  the  decline  in  the  bus- 
iness of  salt  manufacturing  has  closely  followed  the  decline  of 
lumbering,  just  as  the  salt  block  and  the  lumber  mill  have 
been  associated  in  their  activities.  While  the  decline  in  price 
has  diminished  the  profits  to  the  manufacturers,  the  people 
are  getting  salt  for  26  cents  a  barrel  that  cost  them  three  dol- 
lars in  1840.  If  a  mine  can  be  sunk  800  or  1000  feet,  layers 
of  clear  rock  salt  will  be  reached  that  may  be  taken  out  with- 
out dissolving  in  water  and  the  subsequent  expensive  evapor- 
ation. An  attempt  to  do  this  is  now  being  made  near  Detroit. 
Coal  is  a  product  that  is  only  moderately  developed  as 
yet.  Michigan  is  the  fifteenth  state  in  the  Union.  But  the 
industry  is  growing  vigorously,  and  may  be  considered  in 
some  measure  as  a  reaction  of  the  Saginaw  Valley  against  the 
decline  in  its  lumbering  activity.  Up  to  1895  barely  100,000 
tons  a  year  were  mined.  At  present  it  is  chiefly  centered  in 
Bay  and  Saginaw  counties,  but  the  coal  rocks  extend  almost 
across  the  central  part  of  the  state,  as  seen  on  the  diagram. 


10   11  12   13   14 


1893 
1898 
1903 


Fig.  56.    Coal  mined  in  Michigan,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  tons 


It  is  all  soft  or  bituminous  coal,  lying  in  flat  layers  among  the 
slates  and  sandstones.       These  coal  layers  are  believed  to  be 


63 


the  remnant  from  marsh  plants  of  which  fossils  abound  in  it. 
The  product  in  1903  was  1,367,000  tons  worth  $2,707,527. 
This  is  a  million  dollars  more  than  was  mined  in  any  previous 
year. 

Of  gypsum,  more  is  produced  here  than  in  any  other 
state.  In  total  value  it  is  the  least  significant  of  our  minerals, 
though  rapidly  increasing.  It  is  quarried  or  mined  at  two 
points,  near  Grand  Rapids  and  at  Alabaster  near  TawasCity, 

5  10  15  20  25 


Iron  ore 

Copper 

Cement 

Salt 

Coal 

Gypsum  _ 

Fig.  57.     Value  of  Michigan  mineral  products,  millions  of  dollars.  1903 

as  the  name  indicates.     Brick    clays  are    widely    distributed 
over  the  state. 

Great  as  are  these  mineral  resources,  none  of  them  come 
up  to  the  value  of  the  annual  hay  crop,  twenty-seven  million 
dollars,  while  the  total  agricultural  product  is  much  more 
than  twice  as  great  in  value  as  the  whole  output  of  minerals. 
The  lumber,  too,  even  in  these  declining  times,  is  worth 
more  than  the  product  of  all  the  mines.  The  people  of  the 
state  have  a  more  general  participation  in  its  agriculture  than 
in  the  mines,  which  are  almost  necessarily  worked  by  com- 
panies using  capital  from  many  lands.  It  is  said  to  be  com- 
mon enough  among  the  Lake  Superior  copper  miners  to  have 
holdings  in  the  mines  where  they  are  employed,  an  advantag- 
eous arrangement,  but  not  common  in  mining  life.  The 
greatest  gain  the  mines  bring  to  the  people  of  the  state  is  the 
one- they  share  with  all  the  people  of  the  nation,  the  increased 
availability  of  these  useful  substances  from  increase  in  output 
and  lowering  of  price. 

MANUFACTURES 
The  manufactures  of  Michigan  have  depended  largely  on 
her  product  of  lumber  and  minerals.     Though  the  lumber  is 


64 

now  rapidly  declining,  it  still  is  the  basis  of  the  great  indus- 
try of  the  state.  Lumber  and  planing  mill  products  were 
worth  $55,000,000  in  1904.  Based  on  the  great  iron  mines  is 
the  f  oundry  and  machine  shop  output,  in  which  we  include 
Detroit^s  large  business  in  stoves  and  furnaces,  in  all  $37,000,- 
000.  Flouring  mills  in  the  state  in  the  same  period  yielded  a 
product  worth  $26,500,000,  and  copper  smelting  $21,000,000. 
Other  great  industries  are  the  manufacture  of  carriages, 
wagons  and  automobiles,  valued  at  $20,000,000.  Detroit  has 
seen  the  making  of  automobiles  grow  from  nothing  in  1900  to 
a  sale  of  9,000  machines  in  1904,  a  third  of  the  output  of  the 
whole  country.  Lansing  and  Grand  Rapids  also  have  active 
automobile  industries.  Lansing  is  reputed  to  make  more 
automobiles  than  any  other  city  of  its  size  in  the  world.  It 
is  the  home  of  the  well-known  Oldsmobile  machine.  It  is 
said  that  Lansing  has  an  automobile  on  its  streets  for  every 
150  inhabitants.  The  central  position  of  the  state,  its  abund- 
ant raw  materials,  and  sufficient  supply  of  skilled  mechanics 
makes  the  future  of  the  automobile  industry  in  Michigan  look 
very  promising. 

An  application  of  the  state's  lumber  product  is  in  furni- 
ture making,  in  which  the  state  is  third  in  the  Union.  Grand 
Rapids  is  the  great  center  in  the  state,  formerly  getting  its 
hardwoods  from  the  country  around,  but  now  going  out  of  the 
state  for  much  of  it.  The  Grand  Rapids  product  is  very 
widely  and  favorably  known  for  its  quality.  The  furniture 
made  in  the  state  in  1904  was  valued  at  $18,400,000. 

Apart  from  the  iron  ores  which  go  to  Lake  Erie  and 
Pennsylvania,  Michigan  finishes  much  of  her  raw  materials 
within  her  own  borders.  Her  industries  are  well  diversified. 
The  four  chief  industries  of  Detroit  in  lumber,  iron,  chemicals, 
and  vehicles  produce  among  them  barely  a  quarter  of  the  whole 
manufacturing  output  of  the  city.  There  are  then  a  great 
number  of  small  establishments  in  many  different  branches  of 
industry  whose  aggregate  product  is  the  bulk  of  the  whole 
product.  No  state  indeed  produces  and  manufactures  things 
more   essential  to    modern    lite    and    modern    civilization    or 


a  greater  variety  of  them  than  Michigan.  Grand  Rapids  pro- 
duces more  furniture  than  of  any  one  other  product,  yet  the 
aggregate  of  the  other  industries  amounts  to  more  than  twice 
the  value  of  the  furniture.  Furniture  making  may  be  the 
greatest  one  business  in  Grand  Rapids,  but  it  figured  in  1900 
for  only  seven  and  one-half  million  dollars  in  a  total  manufac- 
tured product  of  nearly  twenty-five  millions. 

Battle  Creek  makes  a  specialty  of  breakfast  foods,  but  in 
a  total  manufactured  product  of  $12,000,000  they  represented 
but  $5,000,000. 

Saginaw  and  Bay  City  have  been  at  one  time  more  nearly 
dependent  on  a  single  industry — lumbering.  They  grew 
phenominally  from  1880  to  1890,  through  the  culminating 
period  of  that  business.  In  the  next  decade  they  barely  held 
their  own.  Yet  the  great  developments  of  coal  mining  and 
beet  sugar  manufacturing  have  done  much  to  make  up  for 
the  decline  of  lumbering  and  are  ample  proofs  of  the  vitality 
of  the  Saginaw  Valley.  Both  cities  are  now  growing  again 
on  a  basis  of  prosperity  more  solid  than  ever  before  because 
more  varied.  Manufacturing  is  city  business.  Three-quar- 
ters of  the  manufactures  of  the  country  are  made  in  cities  and 
towns.  In  Michigan  population  is  well  distributed  through 
the  area  and  so  is  manufacturing  industry.  The  output  is 
greatest  in  the  south  where  cities  and  towns  are  more  num- 
erous. Detroit  is  the  greatest  producer.  Grand  Rapids  sec- 
ond, followed  by  Kalamazoo  and  Battle  Creek,  but  all  four 
together  produce  only  $185,000,000  of  a  total  for  the  state  of 
$429,000,000,  considerably  less  than  half.  How  different 
from  Chicago  which  makes  three-quarters  of  the  goods  manu- 
factured in  Illinois! 

The  six  chief  manufacturing  states  of  the  country  are 
New  York,  Pennsylvania,  Illinois,  Massachusetts,  Ohio  and 
New  Jersey,  after  which  comes  a  group  of  five  states  differ- 
ing little  among  themselves.  Of  these  five  Michigan  is  one. 
In  almost  every  one  of  the  six  leading  states  more  or  less 
specialized  industries  are  found  centered  in  huge  groups  of 
population  like  that  at  the  mouth  of  the  Hudson,  which  gives 


h6 

New  York  and  New  Jersey  their  leading  position.  The  dis- 
tribution of  Michigan  industry  through  the  state  may  pass 
with  time,  but  it  is  an  advantage  to  the  people  of  the  state 
while  it  lasts,  for  it  allows  the  numerous  people  who  seek 
industrial  employment  to  find  it  in  small  communities  that  are 
large  enough  to  offer  social  opportunities  and  small  enough 
to  make  possible  a  style  of  life  and  a  freedom  that  is 
denied  to  many  of  those  who  dwell  in  large  cities.  The 
last  ten  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  saw  a  distinct  tendency 
all  over  the  United  States  for  industries  to  grow  more  away 
from  the  larger  cities  than  in  the  preceding  decades.  As 
Michigan  is  wholly  young  in  history  and  development  she  may 
never  see  her  people  concentrated  in  cities  that  contain  a 
large  part  of  all  her  people. 


V. 


COMMERCE  OF  THE  GREAT  LAKES 


The  commerce  of  the  Great  Lakes  has  now  reached  very 
great  proportions.  It  is  mostly  grain  from  the  head  of  Lake 
Superior  or  Chicago  for  Buffalo,  lumber  and  iron  from  Lake 
Superior  to  Lake  Erie  ports  from  which  much  smaller  return 
shipments  of  coal  are  made.  The  routes  are  all  marked  on 
the  diagram  of  mineral  resources.  They  are  unlike  ocean 
lines  of  travel  in  all  following  the  length  of  the  lakes.  Travel 
here  is  more  along  than  across.  The  single  exception  is  the 
railroad  ferry  across  Lake  Michigan  between  Milwaukee  and 
Ludington,  the  only  service  on  the  lakes  that  is  maintained 
all  the  year  around.  This  is  operated  by  the  railroads  as  a 
part  of  their  lines  between  Wisconsin  and  the  east. 

The  water  route  of  the  lakes  offers  cheap  carriage  of 
goods  from  the  producing  west  to  eastern  markets.  Minnesota 
and  Dakota  grain  and  Lake  Superior  iron  ores  have  been 
rendered  immensely  more  available  by  the  opening  up  of  the 
passages  between  the  lower  lakes  and  Lake  Superior.  In 
1895  a  ton  of  iron  ore  was  carried  from  Duluth  to  Cleveland 
by  lake  for  80  cents.  The  lowest  freight  by  rail  was  $2.59. 
The  ore  itself  was  only  worth  on  the  dock  at  Cleveland  $2.80 
Everyone  that  uses  iron  is  a  gainer  by  lake  transportation. 

The  surface  of  Lake  Superior  is  18  feet  higher  than  Lake- 
Huron  and  Lake  Michigan.       This    fall  of  18  feet  in  the  St. 
Mary's  River  causes  the   rapids  called  in  French  Sault  (leap 
or  fall)  Ste.  Marie.     Here  the  early  missionary  explorers  had 


68 


to  land  to  carry  their  canoes  around  the  rapids.  Here  they 
naturally  encamped  and  here  grew  up  a  fort  and  trading  sta- 
tion ot  much  importance.  Great  canals  have  been  built  on 
each  bank  passing  around  the  rapids  and  provided  with  locks 
to  enable  vessels  to  overcome  the  difference  in  level.  One  of 
these  locks  is  shown  in  the  picture  (Fig.  58).        It    is  a  part 


Fig.  58.    The  American  Locks  at  the  Satilt  Ste  Marie.    The  ship  has  come  from  Lake 

Superior  as  now  she  has  come  down  to  the  level  of  the  river  below  the  rapids,  the 

gates  are  being  opened  to  let  her  proceed  southward 

of  the  canal  800  feet  long  and  100  feet  wide,  fitted  with  strong 
water-tight  gates  at  each  end.  The  upper  gates  are  now 
closed  and  the  boats  above  it  float  as  always  at  the  level  of 
Lake  Superior.  The  gates  below  are  just  opening  to  let  out 
the  steamer.  When  they  are  wide  open  the  gates  will  fold 
back  into  the  hollows  seen  in  the  side  of  the  canal,  quite  out 
of  the  way.  Half  an  hour  ago  the  lower  gates  were  shut  and 
the  upper  ones  open.  At  that  time,  of  course,  the  water  on 
which  the  steamer  floats  in  the  lock  was  as  high  as  in  the 
canal  above  and  in  Lake  Superior.  The  steamer  entered  the 
lock    and    the    upper   gates    were    closed    behind    her.     The 


69 

engineers  in  the  building  at  the  left  then  opened  valves  in  a 
great  number  of  pipes  in  the  bottom  of  the  lock  which  allowed 
the  water  to  run  out  into  the  part  of  the  canal  below.  The 
steamer  was  gently  lowered  on  the  surface  of  the  sinking 
water  until  the  level  of  the  lower  reach  of  the  canal  was 
attained;  As  soon  as  the  gates  are  wide  open  the  vessel  will 
steam  off  for  Lake  Huron  or  Lake  Michigan,  some  other 
waiting  ship  will  enter  the  lock,  the  lower  gates  will  be  closed, 
the  water  allowed  to  enter  gently  from  above  through  pipes 
in  the  floor,  until  the  ship  is  lifted  by  the  rising  water  to  the 
upper  level.  Then  the  upper  gates  will  be  opened  and  the 
ship  will  pass  on  to  Lake  Superior.  Two  such  locks  in  the 
American  canal  and  another  on  the  Canadian  side  have  been 
constructed  at  an  expense  of  six  and  four  million  dollars 
respectively. 

During  the  nine  months  of  navigation  there  is  an  immense 
activity  at  these  locks.  In  1904  there  were  carried  eastward 
on  these  waters  between  American  ports  130,000,000  bushels 
of  grain,  21,000,000  tons  of  iron  ore,  1,770,000,000  feet  of 
lumber,  and  1,000,000  tons  of  flour;  and  westward,  14,000,000 
tons  of  coal.  This  is  estimated  to  amount  to  fifty-one  million 
tons  of  freight,  of  which  thirty-one  million  and|a§half  passed 
through  the  Sault  canals.  This  is  not  very  different  from  the 
foreign  and  domestic  trade  of  the  great  port  ofjNew  York  and 
three  times  greater  than  the  tonnage  that  passes  through  the 


NY. 
Sault  Canal 


Suez  Canal 
ChicaKO  S.  Chicago 


Cleveland 
Detroit 


Suez  canal.  The  figures  apply  only  to  the  bulk  of  the  goods; 
coal,  iron  and  grain  are  all  bulky  commodities  and  of  little 
cost.     Imports  to   this    country    from    abroad   include  many 


?0 

materials  like  silk,  coffee,  tea  and  spice,  the  value  of  which 
by  the  ton  would  be  enormous.  Thus  the  New  York  freight 
is  three  or  four  times  as  valuable  as  all  that  passes  along  the 
lakes.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  Suez  canal.  Think  of 
a  shipload  of  tea.  Can  you  reckon  the  value  of  5,000  tons  of 
tea?  The  charge  that  the  owners  of  the  Suez  canal  make  for 
the  passing  of  steamers  is  itself  about  two  dollars  a  ton.  The 
canals  at  the  Sault  are  free  to  all.  The  money  expended  on 
them  represents  but  a  small  part  of  the  outlay  of  the  govern- 
ment on  navigation  on  the  Lakes.  The  United  States,  and  in 
much  smaller  degree  also  Canada,  has  been  constantly  occu- 
pied for  many  years  deepening  connecting  channels,  con- 
structing harbors  of  refuge,  mapping  the  lakes  and  rivers  and 
marking  the  safe  passages  by  buoys  in  the  water  and  light- 
houses and  range-marks  ashore.  The  harbor  building  that 
has  been  done  by  the  national  government  on  the  Great 
Lakes  is  a  vast  work  in  itself.  Except  on  Lake  Superior  the 
American  shores  of  the  Lakes  are  mostly  of  sands  that  work 
along  shore  incessantly  in  wind-driven  currents.  Where  the 
wind  gets  hold  of  such  sands,  dunes  are  built,  as  described  at 
pages  23  and  24.  The  harbors  on  these  sandy  shores  are 
mostly  river  mouths  where  land  waters  have  always  main- 
tained an  uncertain  channel  across  the  beach,  rarely  more 
than  five  or  six  feet  deep  at  the  most  favorable  seasons  and 
liable  to  constant  changes  of  place  and  depth  with  the  contin- 
uous shifting  of  the  sands.  The  general  plan  of  improvement 
at  these  river  mouths  has  been  similar  to  that  used  in  the 
Eads  Jetties  at  the  Mississippi  mouth,  which  confine  the 
waters  of  one  of  the  river  mouths  between  narrowing  walls 
and  cause  the  current  to  scour  out  its  own  bed.  So  on  the 
Lakes,  piers  have  been  built  on  each  side  of  the  natural  stream 
entrances  at  a  moderate  distance  apart  and  extending  well  out 
from  the  shore  line,  as  shown  in  the  picture.  This  always 
improved  the  entrance,  but  a  difficulty  not  found  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Mississippi  exists  in  the  Lakes  in  the  shallowness  of 
their  waters.  The  piers  across  the  beach  compel  the  stream- 
ing shore  sands  to  go  out  around  their  ends,  soon  shallowing 


71 

the  water  there.  In  the  deep  waters  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico 
this  is  an  immensely  slow  process,  but  on  the  Lakes  a  few 
years  suffice  to  fill  up  the  angles  on  either  side  of  the  piers 
and  shallow  its  entrance  with  a  bar.  The  obvious  remedy 
has  been  applied  of  extending  the  piers  further  into  the  Lake 
and  many  of  them  have  now  become  so  long  as  to  involve 
heavy  expense  for  repairs,  the  material  being  invariably 
wooden  piling.  Sheboygan,  Wis.,  has  piers  that  extend  2500 
feet  beyond  the  shore  Hue,  Menominee  2150,  St.  Joseph  2040, 
Milwaukee  1650  and  Muskegon    1550.     The    relief   afforded. 


Fig.  60.         Piers  of  Kincardine  Harbor,  Ontario,    looking  out. 

moreover,  is  only  temporary.  Dredging  had  finally  to  be 
resorted  to  and  if  continuously  applied  is  an  effective  remedy. 
Dredging  is  further  necessitated  by  the  demands  of  modern 
navigation  for  channels  eighteen  to  twenty  feet  deep,  which 
are  not  attainable  by  the  unaided  scour  of  any  streams  that 
flow  into  the  lakes.  Besides  improving  a  large  number  of  har- 
bors of  the  sort,  the  national  government  has  undertaken  even 
greater  works  in  some  of  the  connecting  rivers,  in  the  Sault 
canal,  the  channels  leading  thence  to  Lake  Huron  and  in  the 
St.  Clair  and  Detroit  rivers.  A  continuous  channel  of  twenty 
feet  depth  is  in  process  of  construction  throughout  the  course, 
from  Buffalo  to  Duluth.  A.  most  difficult  part  of  this  work  is 
the  excavation  of  the  bed  rock  that  underlies  the  Detroit 
river  at  the  Limekiln  Crossing  near  Amherstburg,  where  drill- 
ing, blasting  and  removal  of  fragments  has  been  going  on  for 
many  years.     The  maintenance  of    the    desired  depth  at  this 


72 

point  is  rendered  more  difficult  by  the  oscillation  of  Lake 
Erie  in  the  wind.  An  east  wind  raises  the  water  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Detroit  river  and  lowers  it  at  Buffalo  and  the  much 
commoner  west  winds  produce  the  opposite  effects.  Thus 
the  violent  west  wind  of  Nov.  21, 1900,  raised  the  lake  at  Buf- 
falo over  seven  feet  and  lowered  it  at  the  Limekilns  nearly 
three.  At  such  times  a  number  of  north-bound  freighters 
may  usually  be  seen  tied  up  below  Amherstburg  waiting  for 
depth  of  water  sufficient  to  let  them  pass  the  Limekilns.  An 
automatic  gage  at  this  point  indicates  day  and  night  the  depth 
on  the  crossing  in  feet  and  tenths  of  feet.  An  important  part 
of  the  government's  activity  on  the  lakes  has  resulted  in  the 
preparation  of  admirable  charts  of  all  'the  shores  and 
waterways.* 

With  all  this  activity  of  the  United  States,  it  remains  a 
dangerous  navigation.  No  day  in  the  lake  voyage  is  free  from 
that  greatest  of  all  sea  hazards,  the  approach  to  land,  which 
threatens  ocean  ships  only  at  the  end  and  beginning  of  a  voy- 
age. On  the  lakes  the  land  is  rarely  out  of  sight  and  for  hun- 
dreds of  miles  navigation  is  within  a  few  rods  or  even  feet  of 
dangers  that  menace  the  safety  of  the  ship. 

Over  the  deeper,  colder  waters  fogs  are  frequent  as  a 
result  of  the  chilling  of  the  moisture  laden  air  below  its  dew- 
point.  This,  of  course,  happens  oftenest  on  Lake  Superior. 
TheU.  S.  Weather  Bureau  has  pointed  out  that  fogs  are  less 
usual  on  the  southern  route  from  the  Sault  to  Duluth,  that 
crosses  Keweenaw  peninsula  by  the  passages  and  canal  at 
Portage  Entry,  in  warmer  waters.  This  route  is,  however, 
little  used,  perhaps  from  the  added  danger  of  coming  nearer 
land.  At  the  west  end  of  Lake  Superior  lurks  yet  a  greater 
danger  in  the  great  and  irregular  attraction  of  the  country 
rocks  for  the  needle  of  the  compass. 

It  has  been  well  known  since  the  first  voyage  of  Columbus 
that  the  compass  needle  does  not  in  most  parts  of  the  world 
point  to  the  true  north.     An  accurate  ;nap  of  the  variation  of 

*  The  admirable  colored  maps  of  the  separate  lakes  deserve  to  be  in  every  Michigan 
schoolroom.  They  may  be  obtained  at  the  Lake  Survey  oflfice,  Campau  Building:,  Detroit, 
tor  IS  cents  each. 


12> 


the  compass  for  the  lakes  has    recently   been    prepared  by  the 
Lake  Survey  and  is  here  reproduced.       All    places    through 


Pig  61     Lines  of  equal  rmgnetic  v  triation  for  1905  qivinq  the  number  of  degrees  that  the 

compass  points  east  and  west  of  true  north  hy  the  solid  lines  and  the  change  in 

this  variation  per  year  by  the  dotted  line,  west  variation  increasing, 

east  diminishing 

which  passes  the  heavy  line  numbered  0°  have  no  variation, 
i.  e.  the  compass  at  those  places  does  point  to  the  north. 
At  a  point  like  Chicago  on  the  line  marked  3°e.  the  compass 
points  three  degrees  east  of  north,  and  so  of  other  places  on 
the  map.  The  broken  lines  indicate  the  number  of  minutes 
by  which  the  variation  is  changing  per  year,  westerly  variation 
increasing  and  easterly  variation  diminishing.  Thus  at 
Sault  Ste.  Marie  where  the  variation  was  in  1905  4°  west,  the 
annual  change  is  6  minutes  which  by  1915  will  have  amounted' 
to  another  degree.  The  variation  will  be  then  5°  west.  At 
some  localities  near  the  Lake  Superior  coast  of  Minnesota 
variations  are  as  great  as  26°  east  and  within  650  feet  change 


74 

to  6°  east.  This  cannot  be  shown  on  a  map  and,  of  course, 
is  only  noted  very  near  shore.  Along  such  a  shore  the  com- 
pass cannot  be  relied  upon. 

It  is  possible  for  vessels  drawing  leSs  than  fourteen  feet 
of  water  to  pass  from  the  lakes  to  the  St.  Lawrence  and  Europe 
by  making  use  of  the  Welland  canal  around  Niagara  through 
Canadian  territory.  The  passages  both  in  the  canal  and  the 
river  are  narrow,  difficult  and  dangerous  and  accidents  are  so 
common  that  insurance  for  ships  going  over  this  route  is  very 
high  and  the  traffic  does  not  pay.  The  small  size  of  the  ves- 
sels that  can  be  used  in  it  is  another  difficulty.  The  largest 
ships  that  can  pass  the  Welland  canal  are  of  about  3,000  tons, 
and  a  3,000  ton  ship  can  never  carry  goods  so  cheaply  as  the 
great  ships  built  for  the  ocean  freight,  some  of  which  are  now 
of  23,000  tons. 

But  it  is  perfectly  feasible  to  deepen  the  Welland  canal 
and  the  channel  of  the  St.  Lawrence  so  that  the  largest  ves- 
sels can  pass.  If  that  is  ever  done  the  lake  ports  will  be  put 
in  direct  communication  with  the  sea,atleastin  the  open  season. 
The  dangers  of  this  long  course  of  inland  navigation  must  al- 
ways, however,  far  exceed  those  of  the  open  ocean.  Perhapsthis 
extra  hazard  will  always  offset  the  cost  of  an  extra  handling 
involved  in  shipments  of  western  goods  from  Atlantic  ports. 

Great  as  the  carriage  of  Michigan  lumber  and  iron  on  the 
lakes  is,  most  of  the  lake-carried  goods  move  between  points 
beyond  the  territory  of  the  state.  But  the  existence  of  this 
vast  and  ceaseless  traffic  gives  the  state  facilities  of  transpor- 
tation that  encourage  the  growth  of  her  industries  and  she 
shares  with  her  sister  states  in  the  development  and  cheapen- 
ing of  these  great  natural  resources  for  feeding  and  housing 
the  people  of  the  land. 

LAKE    NAVIGATION    IN    WINTER 

Through  navigation  on  the  Great  Lakes  is  usually  sus- 
pended in  January,  February  and  March,  on  account  of  ice  in 
the  connecting  rivers.  Probably  none  of  the  lakes  freeze  over 
solid,  but  the  bays  do  and  St.   Mary's    river    at    the    Sault  is 


75 


generally  crossed  on  foot  in  January  and  February  over  the 
ice.  Put-in  Bay  and  Kelley's  Island  in  Lake  Erie  usually 
have  team  connection  with  the  Ohio  shore  for  a  longer  or 
shorter  period  in  February  and  so  does  Mackinac  Island  with 
St.  Ignace. 

Communication  between  St.   Ignace   and    Mackinaw  City 
is  kept  up  by  train  ferries  through  the  winter  across  the  Straits 


Fig.  62.      A  Lake  Michiaan  car  ferry  baltlinu  with  the  ice 


76 

of  Mackinac.  Detroit  and  Port  Huron  maintain  a  hardly 
interrupted  service  across  the  Detroit  and  St.  Clair  rivers  by 
train  and  other  ferries.  Lake  Michigan,  too,  is  crossed 
throughout  the  year  by  powerful  train  ferries  between  Luding- 
ton,  Frankfort,  Grand  Haven  and  Wisconsin  ports,  but  pas- 
sengers are  not  much  carried  by  this  route,  the  service  being 
a  good  deal  interrupted  by  the  drifting  of  ice  floes  on  the 
westerly  winds  against  the  Michigan  shores,  as  shown  in  Fig. 
62.  For  great  fields  of  ice  form  along  the  shores  in  quiet 
weather,  which  are  driven  out  into  the  lakes  when  the  wind 
rises.  At  times  these  fields  are  so  extensive  that  no  open 
water  can  be  seen  from  the  shore.  In  the  bays  the  ice  remains 
firm  most  of  the  cold  season.  In  Green  Bay,  Grand  and  Lit- 
tle Traverse  Bays  and  Saginaw  Bay  the  ice  cover  enables  much 
fishing  to  be  carried  on  through  the  ice.  Shanties  are  built 
and  little  villages  of  the  fishermen  occupied  on  the  ice  all 
winter  long.  Occasionally  these  men  stay  too  long  in  the 
spring  and  the  warm  south  winds  melt  the  shore  ice  and  leave 
them  drifting  on  a  more  or  less  rotten  ice  floe.  Many  lives 
are  thus  endangered  every  year  and  occasionally  some  are  lost. 

PEOPLING  THE   LAKE   COUNTRY 

Michigan  is  a  part  of  the  earliest  addition  to  the  territory 
of  the  original  thirteen  states.  The  region  was  known  as  the 
Territory  northwest  of  the  Ohio  river.  It  was  ceded  by  Eng- 
land in  1783  at  the  close  of  the  Revolutionary  war,  but  had 
been  British  ground  barely  twenty  years.  For  this  reason  the 
old  English  place  names  that  abound  in  New  England  are 
wholly  absent  here,  their  place  being  taken  by  French  words. 
The  French  trails  that  crossed  it  in  many  directions  between 
the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  were  protected  here 
and  there  by  forts  from  the  savage  Indians  who  were  the  real 
inhabitants.  Of  Europeans  there  were  barely  4,000  in  the 
whole  territory,  between  French  and  half-breeds.  These  were 
grouped  in  three  settlements;  one  at  Detroit,  where  aforthad 
been  built  by  the  French  to  keep  the  English  in  New  York 
from  ascending  the  lakes  in  the    pursuit    of    the  fur  trade,  in 


which  they  were  serious  rivals,  and  the  other  two  at  the  Illi- 
nois towns  near  St.  Louis  and  at  Vincennes  on  the  Wabash. 
The  British  had  put  an  officer  and  a  few  troops  in  each  of 
these  posts  at  the  close  of  the  French  and  Indian  war,  in  1763, 
and  from  them  fitted  out  foraging  parties  of  Indians  against 
the  frontier  settlements  of  Pennsylvania  and  Kentucky  through 
the  Revolution  till  Captain  George  Rogers  Clark  invaded  the 
territory  from  Kentucky,  capturing  the  Illinois  towns  and 
Vincennes  in  1778-9.  The  Americans  held  them  from  that 
time  on,  but  though  the  whole  territory  became  American  by 
treaty  in  1783,  the  British  were  able  to  put  off  giving  posses- 
sion at  Detroit  till  17'^6  by  reason  of  the  distance  from  the 
principal  seats  of  population  of  the  young  nation  and  its 
weakness.     Congress  planned  to  divide  the  territory  into  three 


HiG    63.     The   Northwest    Territory.      Heavy   north    and 
south  lines  divide  it  into  three  states  as  sucigested  by 
Conaress.    The  heavy  lines  across  through  the 
foot  of  Lake  Michigan  the  northern  bound- 
ary suguested  for  those  three  states  if  two 
were  made  to  the  north 

states  as  indicated  by  the  black  lines  on  the  map.  Power  was 
reserved,  however,  to  make  two  or  more  states  out  of  that 
part  of  the  Territory  north  of  an   east   and  west  line  through 


78 

the  southern  point  of  Lake  Michigan,  drawn  heavy  on  our 
map.  Had  this  division  line  been  actually  held  to,  Illinois 
and  Indiana  must  have  been  left  without  frontage  on  Lake 
Michigan,  and  a  glance  at  the  map  shows  that,  as  the  site  of 
Chicago  would  have  been  withheld  from  the  western  state, 
so  Ohio  would  have  lost  Toledo  and  the  much -prized  Maumee 
Bay,  though  this  was  not  then  certainly  known,  since  such 
maps  as  existed  at  that  time  made  the  line  pass  well  north  of 
Toledo.  It  is  not  strange  that  the  three  southern  states  should 
have  wanted  to  change  the  boundaries  thus  set  for  them  when 
they  came  to  seek  admission  to  the  Union.  Ohio  added  a 
little  on  the  north  in  her  own  constitution  of  1802,  but  failed 
to  get  it  specifically  described  anew  by  Congress,  Indiana 
added  rather  more  when  she  was  admitted  in  1816,  and  Illi- 
nois still  more  on  her  admission  in  1S18.  The  feeling  was 
strong  that  Michigan  had  an  enormous  coast  line  from  which 
she  could  easily  spare  a  little  to  them.  Yet  their  action  was 
in  plain  violation  of  the  Ordinance  of  1787,  laying  out  the 
original  lines,  as  well  as  of  subsequent  acts  of  Congress.  In 
1837,  when  Michigan  was  seeking  admission  to  statehood, 
the  dispute  over  the  boundary  with  Ohio  led  to  much  anxiety 
and  the  period  of  excitement  exaggeratedly  called  the  Toledo 
War. 

The  way  in  which  little  communities  of  men  with  organ- 
ized local  government  spread  over  this  region  may  be  seen  on 
Fig.  64.  The  counties  colored  darkest  were  organized  before 
1810.  Of  Michigan  there  was  at  that  time  only  Wayne 
County.  Of  course  that  meant  that  governmental  affairs  for 
the  whole  region  had  to  be  transacted  at  Detroit,  the  only 
considerable  settlement.  By  1830  Chippewa  and  Mackinac 
were  added  and  the  counties  adjoining  Wayne.  Between  1830 
and  1850  the  state  was  admitted  to  the  Union  and  a  consider- 
able movement  ol  people  took  place  into  the  country  between 
Detroit  and  the  Saginaw  Valley  and  the  extraction  of  copper 
was  begun  in  Houghton  countv.  Can  you  see  evidences  of 
these  things  in  the  diagram?  It  was  at  this  same  period  that 
Wisconsin,  too,  had  its  greatest  expansion.       In  Ontario  set- 


79 


tlement  was  earlier  but  slower  to  spread.  In  the  years  from 
1850  to  1870  people  spread  along  the  shores  of  the  lower  pen- 
insula and  iron  in  Marquette  and  lumber  in  Menominee  began 
to  be  sought  for  actively.     In  1890  there    remained    unorgan- 


,9? 

91             90           99             Sa/        87            «           AS            S4            6S            Bt            SI 

80             79            78  " 

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91 

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90      ,         89               e«                87              86              85                84        ,       aj               8?    . 

81                80                79 

Fig.  64.       Date  of  on/itiii-lini  roujity  governmenl;    black,  organized  before  1810.  heavy 
lines  before  18SU,  light  lines  before  1840,  dotted  before  1870- 

ized  only  Oscoda  and  Ogemaw  in  the  lower  peninsula  and  Iron 
in  the  upper.  This  was  added  in  1891,  the  last  county  in  the 
state.  North  of  Lake  Superior  and  Georgian  Bay  Ontario  has 
all  its  territory  still  governed  as  territorial  districts. 

Nearly  a  quarter  of  the  people  of  Michigan  were  born  in  for- 
eign countries,  nearly  half  of  them  in  some  British  territory  and 
a  quarter  more  in  Germany.  Six  per  cent  of  our  people  came 
from  New  York  and  two  per  cent  each  from  Pennsylvania  and 
Indiana.  The  distribution  of  population  in  the  region  in  1900 
is  shown  on  the  map.      (Fig.  65). 


80 


i..uiLiJimu^..:\u   ?-..*^.  i  ■"&..»... J-  ^'i^.,.  I ji^^..s.^y:..::i 


91  S>0  89  «S  67  06  W 


a  ii  e<  BO  79 


Fig.  65-    Population  of  I  he  Lake  Country  in  1900.    Scheme  to  left  gives  number  of 
inhabitants  to  one  square  mile 


FISHERIES 

When  the  white  man  first  came  to  Michigan  it  is  the 
testimony  of  all  the  early  writers  that  the  Great  Lakes  teemed 
with  valuable  food  fish — whitefish,  lake  herring,  lake  trout 
and  sturgeon.  Brook  trout  abounded  in  the  upper  penin- 
sula and  in  the  coast  streams  of  the  lower  peninsula  from 
Mackinaw  to  Traverse  City  in  Lake  Michigan  and  to  Rogers 
City  on  the  Lake  Huron  shore.  Grayling  were  common  in 
streams  still  further  south. 

The  excellence  and  abundance  of  the  native  fish  is  a  fre- 
quent theme  in  early  days.  The  store  was  indeed  inexhaust- 
ible for  the  first  thin  population.  Following  Michigan's 
admission  to  statehood,  however,  settlers  came  steadily  pour- 
in;.,^  in,  and  so  in  all  the  lake  states.  There  has  been  no 
interruption  to  this  growth  of  population  from  that  day  to  this. 


81 

The  ease  of  capture  joined  with  the  excellent  quality  and 
abundance  of  the  fish  exposed  this  resource  of  the  lakes  to 
heavy  inroads.  Before  1880  trout  and  grayling-  were  driven 
from  many  streams  by  lumbering  operations,  the  discharge  of 
sawdust  alone  rendering  many  rivers  unfit  for  fish  and  spoiling 
not  a  few  fishing  grounds  on  the  Great  Lakes  themselves.  Of 
the  Great  Lake  fisheries  in  general  they  were  getting  "played 
out"  in  1878.  About  the  year  1850  the  pound  or  trap  net 
was  introduced,  a  device  consisting  of  a  fence  or  wall-like  net, 
reaching  out  from  the  shore  sometimes  two  or  three  miles  into 
the  lakes,  that  intercepted  the  fish  as  they  swam  along  paral- 
lel to  the  shore,  guided  them  outward  to  a  pound  or  trap 
whence  they  were  lifted  by  the  fisherman  at  his  leisure.  This 
proved  the  most;  destructive  of  fishing  devices  and  has  been 
held  largely  responsible  for  the  rapid  decline  of  the  fisheries. 
The  rough  estimates  available  for  the  earlier  years  put  the 
catch  of  1830,  seven  years  before  Michigan  became  a  state,  at 
8,000  barrels;  of  1857,  at  13,500  barrels;  of  1857,  at  over 
80,000  barrels,  valued  at  $640,000.  In  1885  the  value  of  the 
catch  had  passed  one  and  a  half  million  dollars.  The  same 
thing  was  going  on  in  the  waters  of  other  American  states  and 
of  Canada.  It  has  been  well  said  that  the  commercial  fish 
never  had  a  chance.  In  1878  the  fishermen  had  to  set  their 
nets  twenty,  thirty  and  even  forty  miles  from  shore  and  not  so 
good  lifts  were  had  even  at  those  distances  as  were  had  a  few 
years  earlier  five  or  ten  miles  from  shore  right  in  sight  from 
city  harbors.  In  1842  the  discovery  was  made  in  Europe  that 
brook  trout  could  be  propagated  artifically.  Protection  of  the 
fry  during  their  helpless  stage  of  infancy  made  it  possible  to 
place  in  the  streams  a  new  generation  vastly  outnumbering 
those  that  nature  reared.  In  1873  the  Michigan  Fish  Com- 
mission was  created  for  the  "propagation  and  cultivation  of 
whitefish  and  such  other  kinds  of  the  better  class  of  food  fishes 
as  they  may  direct."  They  were  given  an  appropriation  of 
$7500  which  has  now  increased  to  $33,000.  They  at  once 
began  their  attempt  to  restock  the  lakes  with  whitefish,  with 
the  theory  embodied  in  the  following  statement:      In    a  state 


82 

of  nature  from  a  thousand  whitefish  eggs  not  more  than  one 
survives;  artificially  940  may  be  obtained.  As  one  fish  yields 
about  25,000  eggs,  fish  culture  gives  a  whitefish  24,000 
descendants  where  nature  gives  her  25.  Already  in  1874  a 
million  and  a  half  young  whitefish  were  "planted,"  twelve 
and  a  half  million  in  1878,  fifty  million  in  1886,  a  hundred 
million  in  1890  and  two  hundred  million  in  1892.  The  results 
of  this  vast  fish  nursery  were  somewhat  disappointing,  yet  in 
1885  small  whitefish  were  becoming  abundant  in  the  Lakes, 
presumably  the  result  of  the  Fish  Commission's  "plantings," 
especially  as  they  were  not  observed  at  unplanted  places.  But 
the  catch  of  whitefish  declined  from  eight  million  pounds  in 
1891,  the  first  year  of  statistics  that  the  Commission  regards 
as  reliable,  to  six,  five,  four  and  little  more  than  three  million 
pounds  in  the  four  years  that  followed.  Meanwhile  the  Com- 
mission had  taken  other  fish  in  hand ;  great  numbers  of  eels 
were  brought  from  the  Hudson  river  at  Albany  and  released  in 
the  lakes,  where  they  were  observed  to  thrive  and  grow  large. 
But  the  little  eels  that  had  been  hoped  for  never  appeared ;  it 
was  evident  they  reared  no  families.  Presently  naturalists 
learned  that  the  eel  has  to  go  to  salt  water  to  spawn  and 
indeed  passes  the  earliest  stage  of  its  life  in  the  deep  ocean 
waters  in  a  form  as  little  like  an  eel  as  a  tadpole  is  to  a  frog. 
Sturgeon,  salmon,  brook  trout  and  bass  of  various  kinds 
were  successfully  reared  and  planted  in  lakes  and  inland 
waters.  Here  success  was  as  marked  as  failure  had  been  on 
the  lakes.  Trout  were  not  only  restored  to  streams  once 
completely  fished  out  but  introduced  to  streams  all  over  the 
lower  peninsula,  which  was  reported  changed  (1892)  "from 
a  land  barren  in  brook  trout  to  one  in  which  good  trout  fishing 
is  abundant,  giving  farmers  food  and  attracting  thousands  of 
tourists."  Attempts  were  repeatedly  made  to  domesticate  and 
propagate  the  grayling  which  was  fast  disappearing  as  lumber- 
ing operations  advanced  in  the  northern  part  of  the  lower  pen- 
insula. In  this  there  was  no  success  either  in  finding  them 
spawning  in  the  wild  state  to  obtain  eggs  to  rear  or  in  per- 
suading them  to  spawn  in  captivity. 


83 

Attention  was  given  to  the  food  supply  on  which  the 
whitefish  fed  to  solve  the  doubt  whether  the  small  fish  released 
so  numerously  were  able  to  find  a  sufficient  supply  of  their 
natural  sustenance.  From  the  toothless,  sucker-like,  down- 
turned  jaw  of  the  mature  whitefish  it  was  inferred  to  be  a  bot- 
tom feeder,  as  well  as  from  the  presence  of  numerous  stones 
in  its  stomach,  supposed  to  have  been  caught  up  hastily  as  it 
took  its  food.  Two-thirds  of  its  food  in  cases  examined  in 
the  Charlevoix  region  consisted  of  two  forms  of  minute  life  of 
the  lakes  known  as  the  plankton.     These  are  pontoporeia  hoyi 


Fig.  66.    Plankton  of  great  lakes  on  which  the  whitefish  probably  feeds— much  enlarged 

and  mysis  relicta,  43  and  20  per  cent  respectively.  Of  these 
forms  of  life  there  was  found  a  great  abundance.  There 
was     certainly      food     enough      to     maintain      again    today 


84 

the  teeming  multitudes  with  which  the  lakes  had  one 
time  swarmed.  "If  one  draws  through  the  water  a  net 
of  finest  gauze  and  collects  its  gleanings  into  a 
small  glass  there  will  be  seen  a  myriad  of  minute  forms  almost 
or  quite  invisible  to  the  eye.  The  mass  of  material  obtained 
depends  not  only  upon  the  length  of  the  haul  and  size  of  the 
net,  but  upon  numerous  other  conditions  as  well.  Under  no 
probable  circumstances,  however,  will  the  net  fail  to  collect  a 
certain  amount  of  material  which  the  microscope  shows  to  be 
composed  of  living  organisms  of  varied  character.  Among 
these  are  both  plants  and  animals,  the  latter  so  insignificant 
that  their  own  motion  does  not  suffice  to  carry  them  over  any 
considerable  distance,  and  hence  both  plants  and  animals  are 
dependent  upon  waves,  currents  and  winds  for  their  wide  dis- 
tribution. Their  entire  existence  is  passed  floating  freely  in 
the  water  and  both  plants  and  animals  possess  characters  of 
form  or  structure  fitting  them  for  maintaining  their  position. 
This  mass  of  living  forms  is  known  as  the  plankton.  One  may 
justly  call  it  the  primitive  food  supply  of  the  water,  and  as 
such  it  is  of  course  the  origin  of  fish  food."  There  is  much 
less  plankton  it  appears  in  the  Great  Lakes  than  in  the  ocean, 
but  abundance  to  maintain  a  fish  life  much  greater  than  now 
exists.  Not  merely  is  there  plenty  of  the  two  forms  mysis 
and  pontoporeia,  and  the  others  on  which  whitefish 
feed,  but  the  still  lower  forms  in  the  plankton  on 
which  these  feed.  Of  the  fry  it  is  only  known  that  as  soon 
as  they  absorb  the  food  sac  with  which  they  are  hatched  from 
the  ^%g  they  are  unlike  the  mature  whitefish  in  having  "rap- 
tatorial"  teeth  with  which  they  dart  upon  their  prey,  not  on  the 
bottom,  but  free  swimming  through  the  water.  Just  what 
these  are  is  not  certainly  known,  but  the  fact  that  captive  try 
greedily  chased  and  ate  two  copepods,  cyclops  thomasi  and 
diaptomus  cicilis  suggests  at  least  that  their  natural  food 
resembles  these  crustaceans.  These,  too,  abound  in  the  Great 
Lake  waters. 

It  could  no  longer  be  doubted  that  the  greater  success  in 
peopling  the  streams  with  trout  than  the  lakes  with  whitefish 


85 

was  due  to  the  protection  enjoyed  by  the  former  of  a  close 
season  and  a  legal  size  below  which  they  might  not  be  caught 
under  penalty.  The  lakes  were  overfished.  While  the 
hatcheries  were  doing  all  their  capacity  would  admit  to  replen- 
ish the  waters,  their  work  was  to  a  great  extent  neutralized 
by  the  persistent  catches  of  immature  fish  by  the  fishermen. 
The  substitution  of  steam  vessels  for  sail  boats  and  the  intro- 
duction of  large  capital  had  resulted  in  hastening  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  whitefish  enormously.  The  establishment  of  depots 
where  the  fish  might  be  frozen  and  preserved  for  future  use 
had  offered  a  temptation  to  those  engaged  in  the  business  to 
prosecute  their  work  at  all  seasons  of  the  year.  Many  locali- 
ties formerly  known  as  good  whitefish  grounds  had  by  the 
multiplication  of  methods  of  capture,  been  fished  to  death  and 
now  made  poor  return,  while  many  other  grounds  had  been 
wholly  abandoned  because  of  their  unproductiveness.  Still 
more  serious  was  the  nature  of  the  catch.  It  was  reported 
from  Alpena  in  1892  that  "tons  of  immature  whitefish  were 
taken  in  the  pound  nets  there,  many  of  them  so  small  that 
they  could  not  be  salted,  neither  could  they  be  put  upon  the 
market  and  sold  fresh,  and  as  a  last  resort  they  were  smoked. 
In  other  cases  the  fish  caught  were  so  small  that  they  could 
only  be  disposed  of  to  grind  up  for  fertilizers.  It  was  felt  that 
if  the  millions  of  small  fish  put  in  the  lakes  could  escape  this 
shameful  manner  of  fishing  until  they  attained  a  spawning 
age  and  a  commercial  size,  the  fruits  of  artificial  propagation 
might  be  realized.  A  detail  that  was  noted  in  Charlevoix 
waters  throws  light  on  what  was  going  on: — The  fishermen, 
highly  skilled  in  the  practice  of  their  art  and  easily  distinguish- 
ing varieties  among  the  fish  they  handled  that  seem  quite 
identical  to  the  uninitiated,  looked  with  little  tolerance  on  the 
early  labors  of  the  Fish  Commission  and  maintained  entire 
incredulity  as  to  the  validity  of  their  conclusions.  When  the 
whitefish, coregonus  clupeiformis, began  their  rapid  disappear- 
ance from  Charlevoix  waters  in  the  years  following  1880  the 
fishermen  held  the  fact  to  be  simply  that  the  fish  had  gone 
away  to  some  other  locality.     The  increasing  presence  in  the 


86 

lake  of  sawdust  from  the  lumber  mills  was  regarded  as  a  suf- 
ficient cause.  But  coincident  with  the  "going"  of  the  true 
whitefish  arrived  another,  sold  commonly  as  a  whitefish  but 
well  known  to  the  fishermen  as  distinct  and  named  by  them 
"longjaw"  (coregonus  prognathus)  (Fig.  67).  The  longjaw 
had  not  been  unknown  before,  it  merely  became  now  a  greater 
part  of  the  total  whitefish  catch.  Now  the  true  whitefish 
yields  the  best  catches  at  depths  of  twelve  fathoms  or  less 
while  they  are  not  found  at  depths  of  twenty  to  twenty-five 
fathoms  where  the  longjaws  are  most  abundant.  There-  is  no 
evidence  that  the  habits  of  the  two  species  have  changed  in 
the  period  of  time  considered.  The  simplest  explanation  of 
what  has  occurred  would  seem  to  be  that  as  scarcity  of  the 
whitefish  drove  the  fishermen  to  set    their    nets    further  from 


Fio.  67.    Lonajmv   WliUefish 

shore  it  necessarily  drove  them  into  deeper  and  deeper  waters. 
The  whitefish  had  been  exhausted,  not  driven  away,  and  the 
longjaws  had  not  come  in,  but  were  being  caught  more  because 
the  nets  were  invading  the  deeper  waters  where  they  lived. 
A  singular  confirmation  of  this  explanation  was  afforded  by 
subsequent  experience  in  the  same  waters.  As  the  fishermen 
worked  further  and  further  away  from  shore  the  longjaws  in 
turn  began  to  "go  away"  and  give  place  to  another  form,  the 
"blackfin"  (coregonus  nigripinnis) .  The  black-fin  is 
rarely  found  in  depths  less  than  forty  fathoms.  There 
is  no  ground  to  doubt  that  he  has  always  lived    there  and  is 


87 

caught  now  first  in  growing   numbers    because   the  nets  have 
again  pushed  out  into  deeper  waters. 

The  writer  was  present  on  a  fishing  trip  in  1905  from  a 
Canadian  port  into  Lake  Huron  that  gave  an  idea  of  how 
strenuous  an  assault  is  being  made  on  fish  life.  It  is  probably 
a  fair  example  of  legal  lake  fisheries.  The  little  tug  steamed 
out  at  sunrise  to  a  buoy  some  sixteen  miles  offshore,  marked 
by  a  red  and  white  flag.  It  seemed  a  very  obscure  object  but 
was  easily  made  out  by  the  experienced  fishermen.  The  buoy 
was  taken  in  and  its  line  lifted  until  the  ends  of  the  nets  came 
over  the  rail  at  9:30  a.  m.  From  that  time  till  noon  the  tug 
steamed  slowly  along,  taking  up  seven  miles  of  net  which  was 
lifted  inboard,  net,  fish,  and  all,  by  a  steam-winch  patented 
from  Charlevoix,  Mich.  A  rod  was  run  through  the  rear  wall 
of  the  pilot  house  to  the  engine  room  by  which  the  engines  of 
the  boat  and  the  fish  lifter  could  be  stopped  and  started  from 
the  pilot  house.  Here  at  the  door  stood  one  of  the  crew  of 
five  with  a  gaff  to  help  heavy  fish  over  the  side  but  ready  to 
stop  the  engines  when  needed.  Another  pulled  the  net  hand 
overhand  from  the  fish  lifter  and  laid  it,  fish  and  all,  in  the 
net  boxes  as  evenly  as  possible.  The  rest  busied  themselves 
freeing  fish  from  the  meshes  of  the  net  in  which  they  were 
tightly  entangled,  carrying  off  boxes  filled  with  fish  and  net 
and  bringing  empty  ones.  There  were  56  nets,  each  800  feet 
long  and  eight  feet  wide,  with  lead  sinkers  all  along  one  edge 
and  wooden  floats  along  the  other.  The  sinkers  were  altogether 
too  heavy  for  the  floats  to  lift,  but  the  floats  were  able  to  make 
the  net  stand  up  on  the  bottom  like  a  fence,  seven  miles  long 
and  eight  feet  high.  Two  hundred  and  thirty-eight  fish  were 
taken,  a  third  of  them  whitefish  fifteen  or  twenty  inches  long 
and  weighing  from  three  to  six  pounds.  The  fish  were  liter- 
ally pumped  on  board  by  steam,  coming  over  the  side  from 
one  to  two  a  minute,  an  average  of  one  to  every  150  feet  of 
net.  To  take  these  from  the  nets,  straighten  the  net,  untie 
the  nets  from  each  other  as  a  joint  came  up  and  lay  them  and 
the  fish  in  their  boxes,  called  for  the  incessant  activity  of  all 
hands.       Even  then  the  engines  had  frequently  to  be  stopped. 


88 

Quite  as  many  stones  as  fish  were  lifted,  mostly  jagg-edbits  of 
limestone  greatly  honeycombed  by  the  solvent  action  of  the 
water  and  v/eighing  up  to  ten  pounds.  These  are  probably 
entangled  in  the  net  by  the  fish  in  their  struggles  to  escape 
from  the  meshes,  struggles  which  are  further  evidenced  by  the 
way  the  net  strands  are  forced  into  their  bodies.  A  depth  of 
sixteen  fathoms  had  been  carefully  selected  by  sounding  as 
the  net  was  laid.  At  the  end  of  the  line  the  rush  was  followed 
by  a  twenty-minute  rest  for  lunch.  Then  the  tug  steamed 
over  her  course  again  at  a  three-mile  pace  that  kept  all  hands 
on  the  jump  to  lay  out  the  net  straight  and  clear  so  that  it 
would  stand  upright  on  the  bottom.  When  a  "foul"  comes 
the  engines  are  stopped  and  all  hands  go  to  work  at  it  till  the 
net  is  clear.  At  the  end  of  the  line,  as  at  the  beginning,  a 
heavy  stone  anchors  a  cedar  buoy  with  pole  and  flag  and  the 
net  is  set.  Two  other  similar  lines  will  keep  the  tug  busy 
tomorrow  and  the  day  after.  On  the  third  day  this  will  be 
again  taken  np.  From  the  stake  in,  all  hands  clean  fish,  with 
an  occasional  turn  at  engine  and  wheel.  When  the  landing  is 
made  the  catch  is  ready  for  the  ice  or  for  sale. 

The  hope  of  the  Fish  Commission,  to  maintain  a  constant 
supply  of  food  fish  to  the  lakes  by  securing  the  growth  from 
the  egg  to  maturity  of  as  many  fish  as  were  annually  caught, 
had  failed  of  realization.  Much  has  been  said  when  we  state 
that  fishing  paid  so  good  a  return  on  the  capital  it  employed 
that  its  appliances  improved  and  the  zeal  with  which  it  was 
prosecuted  increased  much  too  fast  for  the  fish  introduced 
into  the  lakes  by  the  Commission  ever  to  have  a  chance  to 
grow  up  unless  their  capture  in  infancy  were  legally  prevented. 
The  Commission  is  satisfied  that  a  whitefish  does  not  spawn 
before  attaining  a  weight  of  at  least  two  pounds,  yet  a  million 
pounds  of  the  total  of  three  million  pounds  caught  in  1895 
were  individuals  weighing  less  than  one  and  a  quarter  pounds. 
As  a  specific  example  a  firm  in  Grand  Haven  shipped  a  barrel 
of  whitefish  to  Detroit  which  was  found  to  contain  between 
twenty-five  hundred  and  3000  individuals.  The  shippers 
offered  a  similar  lot  every  day  in  the  season.   The  diminishing 


89 

size  of  the  mesh  of  the  nets  used  contributed  much  to  this 
result.  The  legal  mesh  in  1870  had  already  contracted  some 
since  earliest  days.  It  was  then  4Hnches,  not  open  as  in  use, 
but  stretched  out  to  its  greatest  extent.  In  1896  it  had 
diminished  to  2%  inches  and  illegally  nets  were  doubtless  used 
even  smaller  than  this.  In  1894  an  attempt  to  pass  a  law 
enforcing  penalty  for  having  in  possession  whitefish  under  a 
standard  size,  met  defeat  at  the  hands  of  the  fishermen  who 
saw  in  it  rather  the  present  limitation  of  their  catch  than  the 
protection  of  their  future  interests.  In  1894  Lake  Ontario 
was  declared  "fished  out,"  while  from  Lake  Erie  fishing  firms 
were  moving  to  Lake  of  the  Woods  at  least  for  summer  work. 
The  U.  S.  Fish  Commission  that  year  suspended  work  in 
Lake  Erie  for  lack  of  whitefish  from  which  spawn  could  be 
obtained.  In  1897  a  protective  law  was  at  last  obtained.  It 
was  now  illegal  to  use  pound  nets  with  meshes  of  less  than 
3^2  inches  in  the  pockets,  to  have  the  following  fish  in  pos- 
session of  less  weight  than — sturgeon,  15  pounds;  whitefish, 
2  pounds;  lake  trout,  i  pound;  walled-eyed  pike  or  pickerel, 
1  pound;  catfish,  1  pound;  perch,  4  ounces;  all  in  the  round, 
to  net  fish  between  October  13  and  December  15,  when  the 
whitefish  are  spawning,  to  take  trout,  salmon  or  grayling 
between  September  1  and  May  1,  to  kill  them  at  any  time  in 
any  other  way  than  by  fishing  with  hook  and  line,  to  have 
them  in  possession  under  7  inches  long,  or  to  have  trout  or  gray- 
ling for  sale.  The  results  are  regarded  as  distinctly  satisfactory, 
yet  the  period  during  which  protection  has  been  had  is  brief  and 
the  whitefish,  to  which  most  attention  has  been  given,  shows 
only  moderate  increase.  The  average  value  of  the  whitefish, 
however,  has  risen  from  less  than  4  cents  per  pound  in  1892  to 
nearly  six  cents  in  1902.  If  this  result  from  the  elimination 
of  the  smaller,  immature  fish  it  is  a  great  gain.  It  may  merely 
point  to  an  increased  demand  for  the  same  qualities  that  were 
formerly  cheaper.  The  herring  catch  is  known  to  have 
increased  with  increasing  demand.  Early  statistics  are  not 
relied  on    but   it  is  not  questioned    that  whitefish    and  trout 


90 

formerly  made  up  much  the  g^reater  part  of  the  total  catch. 
Kinds  of  fish  are  now  caught  and  sold  for  which  there  was 
then  no  market.  The  total  value  of  the  Great  Lake  fisheries 
in  1900  was  over  five  million  dollars,  of  which  one  and  a  half 
were  reported  for  Michigan.  Michigan  and  Ontario  led  in 
value  of  the  catch  among  all  the  neighboring  states. 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  50  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.00  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


JAM  25  1^5 


QAN   DEPT. 


